Man jailed and fined Dhs500,000 for bringing 4kg of drugs to Dubai

Mohammed Yaseen, Staff Reporter

Dubai Criminal Court sentenced an Asian national to life jail, to be followed by deportation after serving his sentence, and fined him Dhs500,000 after being charged with bringing 4 kilogrammes of drugs inside food items, which were discovered by a Dubai airport customs inspector.

Details of the incident which took place at Dubai International Airport date back to January 2022, when a customs inspector at the airport reported that he had seized a quantity of drugs inside frozen and dried foods inside the luggage of an Asian traveller coming from his home country.

The inspector reported that he suspected abnormal mass inside the traveller’s bag, and when he examined its contents and asked him about these contents, he denied that there were any prohibited or hidden materials.

The inspector added in interrogations that the bag was manually inspected, and materials suspected to be narcotic substances were found inside it, stuffed inside packages of frozen meat and food, hidden in a professional manner, so the police were informed of the incident.

The forensic laboratory report for examining the seized items stated that they were dried herbal substances weighing 4,200 grammes of “marijuana”, listed in Table No.1 within Federal Decree Law No. 3 of 2023 and its amendments.

On being interrogated, the suspect denied knowing that the food he brought from his home country contained narcotic substances, claiming that the seized items belonged to another person living in Dubai who asked him to bring meat and food from his country. He added that he had received frozen meat wrapped in plastic from one of that person’s relatives, which he put in his bag without checking it.