Dubai: A businessman has been cleared of kicking a drug enforcement officer but was jailed for 30 months for possessing methamphetamine and refusing to give a urine sample for drug test.
A Dubai Police anti-narcotics squad went to the residence of the 49-year-old Emirati businessman to escort him for a drug test in April after obtaining the prosecutors’ warrants.
Once police reached the businessman’s villa in Al Mizhar, they apprehended him at 9.30am.
The anti-narcotics police squad took the defendant to the forensic laboratory to give a urine sample for the drug test but he refused and resisted.
On Monday, the Dubai Court of First Instance sentenced the Emirati defendant to two years for possessing drugs and six months for refusing to give urine sample for the drug test. He possessed 4ml of methamphetamine that was seized at his residence.
Citing lack of corroborated evidence, presiding judge Habib Awad acquitted the 49-year-old of kicking the drug officer. The Emirati suspect pleaded not guilty in court.
“I did not kick the drug officer and the seized drug was not mine. I did not give them a urine sample … for a very minor problem that I had, the procedures that were implemented against me were too exaggerated,” the defendant argued in court.
An police lieutenant said they raided the defendant’s residence at 9.30am.
“We obtained prosecutors’ warranting to escort the suspect to the Anti-narcotics Department to give a sample for a drug test. When we reached the department he refused to give the sample and resisted us. He allegedly kicked several officers who tried to make him go through the testing process. He refused to give sample for the test twice. Then we took him to his residence to search it, where he grabbed a tube and emptied its content on the floor … it looked like heroin. Then he resisted us ferociously until we restrained him and took him into custody. We found in his villa tools used for consuming drugs,” the police officer said.
The defendant appealed his ruling on Monday.
