Death sentences over 20 grams
Abu Dhabi’s Criminal Court sentenced two young men to death for selling 20 grams of marijuana, worth about 260 pounds, to a detective posing as a customer.[1][2][3] The pair were a British man, named as Nathaniel Lees, and a 19-year-old Syrian, caught in a police surveillance operation.[1][2][3] Both faced execution by firing squad, the Emirates’ standard method.[2][3]
Lees’s mother, who is of Eritrean origin, was in court when the sentence was imposed and collapsed outside the courtroom, as did the Syrian’s mother.[1][2][3] The judge described Lees as a hardened dealer also selling opium and heroin, though no evidence of that was produced in court, and noted a previous drug-possession charge on his record.[1] Britain’s Foreign Office confirmed a British national faced the death penalty and said its team was providing consular help.[3]
Sting and appeal window
A Sudanese co-defendant in the same case was sentenced to a year in jail followed by deportation for taking the drug, while a 17-year-old Emirati was sent for rehabilitation.[3] Defence lawyers had attacked the police investigation’s credibility, saying the witness did not know the defendants’ address and that the account of the Syrian asking the Briton in Arabic to fetch the drugs from the car made no sense.[3] The men had 15 days to appeal to the higher courts, where a panel of three judges would decide, and the sentence was expected to face automatic review up to the Court of Cassation.[1][3]