This has been one of the most closely followed stories of the past several months, certainly among expatriates and as measured by The National’s website:

The murder of an American woman in the toilet of a mall on Reem Island, here in Abu Dhabi, on December 1.

Today, the Emirati woman who carried out the carefully planned attack (of someone she didn’t know) was sentenced to death.

What horrifies and compels Western expats, in particular, to follow this story is the specific yet random nature of the killing — the murderer said in court she “wanted to create fear, especially for American, British and French expatriates”. So she went out to kill.

Anyone who watched the creepy videos of Alaa Al Hashemi entering the mall and exiting after stabbing to death a woman named Ibolya Ryan … felt their skin crawl.

It is to the credit of the UAE/Abu Dhabi legal system that the woman was quickly arrested, having left a video trail that showed she also tried to plant a bomb outside the front door of an Egyptian-American doctor, a bomb that failed to go off.

And today she was sentenced to the ultimate punishment.

In a fine story, a reporter at The National reconstructs the descent of the Al Hashemi woman, 30, from “child bride” to “brutal murderer”, following the path of an abused woman who over 10 years eventually absorbed the extremist beliefs of her husband, who had been arrested, in Abu Dhabi, a month before the murder.

We also have a graphic representation of her movements before and after the murder.

Particularly creepy is the six-minute police video of Alaa Al Hashemi arriving at the underground parking lot of the mall, and her movements, including her hurried exit after stabbing to death Ryan, the mother of three children and a nursery school teacher, who screamed during the attack without attracting any help from fearful bystanders.

In an op-ed piece, a National staffer reflects on the topic of self-radicalization, which can happen when unstable people are lured into destructive ways by videos from murderous organizations such as Al Qaeda (in this case) or the Islamic State. Al Hashemi wasn’t necessarily self-radicalized, but her husband might have been, and seems to have passed the contagion.

What made this story more fascinating and horrifying was the semi-random choice of a victim. One story suggested that it could have been a British woman whom the murderer attacked, but she apparently changed her mind because the British woman was pushing a baby carriage.

I suspect everyone in Abu Dhabi and the UAE is relieved this crime has a resolution: An assailant identified, arrested, evidence against her marshaled, a conviction.

Most of us will continue to believe the UAE is one of the safest countries in the world. Violent attacks of any sort are extremely rare, particularly between the many ethnic groups who life here.

This murder is the exception that seems to prove the rule. The UAE is a tolerant place where people of all descriptions get along. Except in extremely rare and, thus, closely followed, circumstances.