Trader spared jail in 13kg cocaine case

Hamza M Sengendo, Staff Reporter

A trader allegedly implicated in transporting 12 plastic bags containing 13 kilogrammes of cocaine has been proven innocent.

The Jordanian defendant, 48, first appeared at the Dubai Criminal Court on Jan.13 on suspicion he and the cocaine’s fugitive owner brought the consignment from Brazil on transit to Sudan on May 29 last year.

“I have nothing to do with the drugs and I was not even aware they were there,” he argued. On Feb.19 his female lawyer contended there were no grounds to accuse him. “The shipment was not registered in his name.

“He was even not aware it contained banned substances. He denied during all stages of interrogations,” she said and presented a defence memo. The court cleared him. The Appeals Court has upheld the ruling. On the record, a source alerted police that a customs transactions clearance agent received documents of a shipment containing banned drugs. A police team traced and apprehended him near Hamriya Park.

He said a Sharjah shipping company official handed him the documents at Jebel Ali Port to finalise the shipment’s procedures against a Dhs2,000 reward. Dubai Police sniffer dogs searched the shipment for drugs. 

They landed on the 13 kilogrammes of cocaine stashed in small barrels. The agent said he had nothing to do with them and that his role was clearing shipments from Brazil before they could be exported to Sudan. He said the official and his colleague may have something to do. Police nabbed the official at the company and also detained a female employee they found him with. They nabbed the official’s colleague in Ajman.

The official said he did not know anything to do with the seized cocaine and explained that the female employee obtained the documents from a male shipper who imported the shipment from Brazil to take it to Sudan.   The colleague distanced himself from it and said he too thought as told by the shipper that the shipment contained dyes only. Investigators learnt that the defendant in question was following up with the shipment.

The shipper helped police lure him. He was nabbed at the Dubai Airport upon arrival on Aug.7. He said the owner in Sudan sent him to Dubai to meet the shipper about an earlier shipment of dyes that reached perished.  Police asked him why he asked the shipper to rush the shipment and also went to Sudan to photograph the dyes. He said the owner owed him around $6,000 thus he went to witness the sale and get back his money.