Top court upholds life sentence on drug dealer

Aya Al Deeb, Staff Reporter

The Federal Supreme Court has upheld a verdict in which a defendant was sentenced to life and fined Dhs50,000 to be followed by deportation.

The verdict also ordered the items seized in his possession to be confiscated.

Secret sources confirmed to the witnesses in the case that the defendant possessed a quantity of Lyrica for sale. The defendant agreed with an undercover source to sell him a pack of Lyrica for Dhs500. Based on the agreement, a team was formed to arrest the defendant red-handed. The source was given Dhs500 to be given to the defendant. In the set time and place, the source met the defendant, who gave him a 12-capsule pack of Lyrica and was given Dhs500, which was seized from his trousers.

A laboratory report confirmed that the pills seized from the defendant were pregabalin listed in table 8 of article 65 of law No.14 for 1995. The Court of First Instance issued its verdict against the defendant but the latter appealed against it. The Abu Dhabi Federal Court, however, rejected the appeal but the defendant appealed again and the Public Prosecution presented a memo in which it asked the appeal to be rejected on the basis of the defendant’s confession that he was arrested on the day of the incident while selling a pack of Lyrica containing 12 capsules for Dhs500.

Recently, the Abu Dhabi Court of Appeal started hearing a case in which three people were charged with swindling money from a company. The third defendant, an Arab national in charge of the electricity section who was entitled to select bids, submitted fake bids for a tender to be awarded to a certain company.

Asked by the court, the defendants denied the charge levelled against them. The first defendant pointed out that the bidding prices were given to him by the company, while the second defendant said he had nothing to do with the case as he was merely a company employee.

The defendants’ lawyer affirmed that according to the experts’ initial report, the defendants did not cheat the company and there was no harm inflicted on the company which the defendants should be punished for. The lawyer pleaded that the first defendant had been living in the UAE for 30 years and owned a factory, while the third defendant had been living in the country for 25 years and was entitled to bonuses estimated at millions of dirhams.

The lawyer submitted 3 dockets and a defence memo to the court and asked for revocation of the Court of First Instance’s ruling, which sentenced each defendant to 6 months in jail to be followed by deportation.