Two cannabis smugglers sentenced to death over burning boat off Dubai
The Dubai Supreme Court handed death sentences to two of six cannabis smugglers in November 2003 after they set fire to their boat, carrying more than 800 kilos of cannabis, as the Anti-Narcotics Squad approached off the Dubai coast. The other four smugglers received life sentences.
The Dubai Supreme Court handed a death sentence to two of six drug smugglers who set fire to a boat carrying more than 800 kilos of cannabis as the Anti-Narcotics Squad approached them off the Dubai coast.[1]The rest of the gang received life sentences.[1]
The cable notes that a 1995 law stipulates capital punishment for drug trafficking in the UAE, but that no executions for drug offences had ever taken place and sentences were usually commuted to life imprisonment.[1]
Case data
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Abu Dhabi's federal appeal court upheld a three-month use sentence and a trafficking acquittal for a man caught collecting hashish in Al Nahda, Sharjah. His co-defendant was sentenced in absentia to life over 1,091.1 grams of cannabis-linked drugs.
Abu Dhabi's Court of Appeal overturned a life sentence for possessing cannabis and psychotropic substances with intent to traffic and reclassified the offence as possession for personal use. The court found no evidence of promotion, negotiation or delivery, and said the investigation did not explain why police had concluded he was trading.
Dubai's criminal court sentenced a 35-year-old Bangladeshi man to life in prison, 25 years under UAE law, for trafficking cannabis after police found 193.13 grams in his flat and WhatsApp messages about sales. He had been caught in a sting in Al Nahda after a Sudanese buyer led investigators to him.
The United Arab Emirates pardoned Fidaa Kiwan, an Arab-Israeli photographer arrested in Dubai in April 2021, and she flew home to Israel on 26 March 2023. Prosecutors said she was found with 500 grams of cannabis and 50 grams of cocaine; her first sentence was death, later reduced to life on appeal.