Cairo’s appeals criminal court was due on Wednesday to deliver its ruling on the appeal of a jewellery-shop owner, his son and a third man against life sentences imposed at first instance.[1] That first-instance verdict had punished each of the three with life imprisonment and a 100,000-Egyptian-pound fine for manufacturing and trafficking drugs and holding unlicensed firearms in Al-Salam.[1] An earlier hearing set 4 November for the appeal ruling.[2] The three are a 45-year-old jewellery-shop owner, his 22-year-old son and a 19-year-old man, all sent for criminal trial.[1]
The case began when an officer of the General Administration for Drug Control received information, confirmed by his inquiries, that the accused were holding quantities of drugs, and obtained prosecution permission to arrest them and search their persons and home.[1] Acting on the warrant, the officer went to where the accused were, knocked, and detained the first man when he opened the door, who said the other two were in a room.[1] A search of the home found quantities of drugs later confirmed by laboratory testing as narcotics, alongside firearms, ammunition and two knives.[1]
Prosecutors charged the men with manufacturing the narcotic hashish for the purpose of trafficking.[1] They also charged them with possessing heroin, hashish, methamphetamine, indazole and the narcotic clonazepam for trafficking outside legally authorised circumstances.[1] Prosecutors further charged them with unlicensed possession of a shotgun, a second shotgun-type firearm and 10 cartridges for use in the two weapons.[1] The hashish charge is the cannabis component recorded here, while the reported drug finds were described only as quantities with no separable cannabis weight.[1]