Dubai waitress jailed 4 years over Spice drug

Dubai: A waitress will have to spend four years behind bars after a court overruled her acquittal and convicted her of possessing the drug, Spice, for personal use.

The Dubai Appeal Court cancelled the acquittal of the 26-year-old Serbian waitress, D.M., and jailed her for four years although she entered a not guilty plea.

When she appeared before the appellate court, the Serbian woman denied possessing 0.58 grams of Spice for personal use.

She told the appeal court that she did not know the nature of the seized substance was and that it was illegal in Dubai.

After accepting the prosecutors’ appeal, Presiding judge Saeed Salem Bin Sarm said the defendant will be deported after serving her punishment.

D.M.’s lawyer argued in court that drug enforcement officers carried out what he described as phony inquiries before arresting his client.

“Drug enforcement officers failed to carry out serious inquiries before they arrested D.M. They did not even carry out any inquiry, or to be more precise they carried out phony inquiries. She did not know what the substance which was seized in her possession was. The prosecutors’ search and arrest warrant was issued based on an unfounded tip-off from the informant who alerted the drug enforcement officers.

“D.M. was cited admitting to the police that she possessed Spice for her personal use. Yet when she was questioned before prosecutors she denied the accusation. Actually she was not aware of the nature of the substance that she consumed. When she heard the drug enforcement officers saying Spice, she said that she used Spice,” argued the lawyer.

An Emirati anti-narcotics police captain said an informant tipped them off that the waitress was in possession of and took drugs.

“We issued a prosecutor’s warrant and arrested the woman at a nightclub on Shaikh Zayed Road on November 13. We pulled her out of the nightclub and the policewoman did not find anything in her possession. We accompanied her to her residence in Tecom where we seized a tiny piece of Spice,” stated the captain.

The lawyer asked the appellate court to uphold his client’s acquittal considering that law enforcement procedures were unlawfully carried out against D.M. The appellate judgement remains subject to appeal before the Cassation Court.