Dubai: A famous Saudi YouTuber has been sentenced to six months in jail for consuming Hashish.
The Dubai Court of First Instance heard on Sunday that the 18-year-old social media influencer was caught inside his apartment in the Business Bay area of Dubai in February last year, along with the other suspects who were later referred to the Court of Misdemeanour. They were caught while consuming Hashish.
The Saudi YouTuber was accused of possessing and planting three marijuana plants inside his apartment.
According to official records, the Anti-Narcotics Department at Dubai Police was tipped-off about the Saudi defendant possessing drugs. A 32-year-old Emirati policeman said the defendant, who has millions of subscribers on his YouTube channel and huge number of followers on Instagram, was arrested with two male youngsters and a female minor.
“We found tobacco mixed with hashish weighing 8.29 grammes. We found a plastic bag inside the freezer containing about 82 grammes of Hashish,” said the policeman on record. The policeman added that officers found a device in the living room for flowering three [marijuana] plants. “He admitted that he had found the seeds and planted them.”
The three plants were 60cm tall and weighed 405 grams, according to records.
The second defendant claimed that he had bought the marijuana seeds from a person during a party in Dubai and kept them in the apartment where the Saudi YouTuber later planted them.
During interrogation, the defendants said that another person had supplied them with the drugs who wasn’t with them during the raid. Police later arrested the supplier who was found with a certain amount of Hashish in his car. The supplier claimed that he had got the drugs from an unknown Pakistani man outside the UAE whom he came to know through WhatsApp.
“The Pakistani man had sent him the location from where to collect the drugs and he wired him the money through an exchange house. He claimed that he had sold the drugs to the defendant for Dh3,000,” added the policeman.
The court has ordered to deport the Saudi defendant after serving his jail term. The verdict is subject to appeal within 15 days.
