The United Arab Emirates supreme federal court has rejected a 15-year-old expatriate girl?s plea to reverse a Muslim court sentence of 90 lashes for adultery, a newspaper reported yesterday.

The Gulf News daily, which withheld the girl?s name and nationality, said the court also sentenced the man she had ?illicit relations? with, but gave no details of his sentence.

The girl, who also faces deportation, appealed twice on the grounds she was a juvenile, but the federal court upheld the ruling under Sharia law by the criminal and appeal courts in the capital Abu Dhabi.

?The federal court said that according to Sharia law, the girl has already reached adulthood by reaching puberty as confirmed by a medical doctor,? the daily said. Under Islamic Sharia law, the penalty for adultery can range from flogging to stoning to death. Its implementation varies among Muslim states.