Mobile phone found in burnt-out car exposes Wafi centre Pink Panther gang

Dubai: Forensic evidence plays a critical role in solving complex criminal cases, and in Dubai, the forensic experts at the General Department of Forensic Science and Criminology have pioneered numerous advanced techniques to crack even the most challenging mysteries.

In the dusty archives of Dubai Police’s forensic department lies a case that haunted investigators for decades. It began in the 1980s with a brutal murder—and a single cigarette butt left behind at the scene.

At the time, the evidence was a dead end. The technology to extract or match DNA simply didn’t exist. The cigarette was bagged, logged, and stored—one of many pieces of evidence from unsolved crimes, waiting for answers that seemed unlikely to come. But time has a way of shifting the odds.

More than 15 years later, in a different emirate, the same man committed another crime. This time, his DNA was collected and added to a national database. When forensic analysts ran a routine check, the past came rushing back: a perfect match with the decades-old cigarette.

Faced with the evidence, the man confessed.

Brigadier Al Sumaiti said this breakthrough was dubbed the "Capri Sun" case.

Cases like this are no longer the exception—they’re becoming the rule. Thanks to meticulous evidence preservation and advances in DNA technology, cold cases once thought unsolvable are being reopened and resolved. Dubai’s forensic experts are now able to extract genetic material from even the most degraded biological samples and run them through advanced systems that can identify suspects—or even their relatives—with remarkable accuracy.

Meticulous preservation of evidence under controlled conditions. As a result, when advanced analysis techniques became available, the DNA sample was successfully matched with modern databases, solving a cold case that had long since gone cold

Brigadier Al Sumaiti said the challenge in this case was that they found a body at a crime scene without hands and without a head—the wrists were cut off. So, you have no fingerprint, no head. In cases of anonymous deaths, the first thing we do is facial recognition—present the face via a camera or iPad or whatever device is available. If you have facial biometrics, then you can identify the person. That’s part of the identification process we use.

But in this case, we had no facial recognition, no fingerprints—nothing. it was on the street—on the shoulder of the road, near a sandy area. A man was out for a walk and, by chance, saw the body. He contacted emergency services. The crime scene team arrived and was shocked to find a headless and handless body of an unidentified person.

From a forensic perspective, this was a highly challenging case. You might find DNA, but who does it belong to? If the person isn’t in our databases—whether for fingerprints or facial recognition—you can’t identify them. So, we were dealing with an unidentified victim.

One of the things we did was DNA analysis and toxicology screening—to see if the person had been drugged. We also used newer sciences to try to determine the person’s ethnicity. There’s a field called facial recognition-based ethnicity estimation—it helps you guess whether someone is European, Filipino, East Asian, or Arab. In this case, the estimate was that the person was Filipino or East Asian, but we weren’t sure.

There were no cameras. No digital evidence. For three or four months, we didn’t know who this person was. Then we got a small hint from a missing person’s platform. People had been calling about someone specific. There were five individuals being tracked in total. Four of them were accounted for, but one—this woman—remained unidentified.

Eventually, they tracked down her residence and phone. Then they found someone connected to her and brought him in for questioning. He confessed. He said it was his aunt, and she had been demanding money from him, threatening him daily. On the day she was killed, he told her he would come and pay, but a verbal altercation escalated. He strangled her and tried to get rid of the body—dumped it, and buried the hands and head separately to prevent identification through fingerprints or facial recognition.

He confessed to his crime and this was one of the cases that really puzzled us for a long time.

In one case, a woman spat in a man's face. Three days later, the man reported the incident to the police. Despite the time that had passed, forensic experts were able to collect a DNA sample from the trace of saliva. The evidence was sufficient to identify the woman, leading to her conviction.

Today, with the technologies available, there's no crime scene where a digital forensics expert isn't involved. They’re part of the on-call team we dispatch to incidents. We refer to them as electronic evidence experts.

Let’s say the phone belongs to the victim—usually that's the case. Now, what types of evidence can you extract from this phone? You’ve got fingerprints, DNA possibly, and what we call a data extraction—checking the last calls, relationships, and often that leads us directly to suspects.

Brigadier Al Sumaiti recalled one famous case which came to his mind: the Pink Panther case at Wafi Center, A call came in about a car that drove into the mall lobby and into a jewelry store. Within four minutes, the robbery was done and they were gone. They burned the getaway car, but fate intervened. A mobile phone was inside. From that phone, we identified the criminals, tracked them down, and determined their nationalities. They were part of a famous international gang known as the Pink Panthers.

Another case was the “Chechen” case. It followed a similar pattern. At the Ibn Battuta Mall parking lot, a person was found with a gunshot wound. The weapon was there. Cameras had caught it all. Fingerprints and DNA were on the gun. The perpetrator was identified and brought to justice

“The work of a forensic expert is incredibly complex and sensitive,” Brigadier Al Sumaiti explained. “It plays a crucial role in achieving justice.” He notes how forensic science in Dubai has evolved, introducing cutting-edge technologies like brainwave fingerprinting and voice biometrics—now instrumental in detecting threats and exposing deepfake crimes—alongside traditional psychological profiling.

We follow strict procedures to protect the integrity of the evidence. This includes "chain of custody"—who collected it, how it was sealed, who received it. If this chain is broken, it can be grounds to dismiss the evidence in court. For example, if the evidence bag is listed as white but the expert received a brown one—that implies tampering.

From the moment of collection to the return of the evidence to the relevant authority, everything is documented and electronically tracked through a platform called [Athar in Arabic which means in English Trace]. It manages the chain of custody process

Brigadier Al Sumaiti explained that the "Athar Platform" provides a secure digital system for recording and storing evidence electronically, ensuring its integrity and enabling comprehensive tracking of all handling and processing operations. This enhances the credibility of the evidence in court proceedings.

Key features:

• Electronic Documentation of Evidence

Securely records all evidence in digital form to ensure accuracy and reliability.

• Preservation of Evidence Integrity (Chain of Custody)

Maintains a verifiable, tamper-proof record of every action taken on the evidence, protecting its legal validity.

• Monitoring Trends and Generating Statistics

Enables analysis of evidence-related data to identify patterns, support investigations, and inform decision-making.

Sample Preservation

Preservation by Sample Type: Different types of evidence require specific preservation methods. These include narcotics, biological samples, weapons, machinery, documents, electronic devices, and fingerprints.

Temperature-Controlled Storage: Evidence is stored under appropriate conditions depending on its nature—ranging from room temperature to refrigerated, frozen, or deep-frozen environments.