Legal eagles: Terminal justice

Suspected drug mules and law offenders flying into the country will face immediate justice as prosecutors will soon be stationed at Dubai International Airport, an official said.

The world's first special branch of airport public prosecutors will be working round-the-clock at the airport to deal with passengers suspected of engaging in criminal activities.

Future lab

Plans are also afoot to set up a forensics and narcotics laboratory at the airport to help speed up evidence confirmation on drug-related cases.

Under the present system, airport cases are initially referred to the Public Prosecution office in Bur Dubai, from – a process that takes days.

The airport Special Prosecutors Office will be up and running within weeks, according to Chief Prosecutor Mohammed Ali Rustum, who also heads the Bur Dubai Second Public Prosecution.

“The office will render faster and more efficient services to improve the litigation processes,'' he said.

“Minor cases that previously took a few days to be viewed and decided upon can now be settled in minutes in our new set up.''

The airport prosecution office will be located at Terminal 1. Three prosecutors will work under a chief prosecutor who will have the authority to dismiss or refer cases to court directly.

Rustum said majority of criminal cases at Dubai International in 2008 were drug-related. Of the 686 cases investigated by Public Prosecution at the airport this year between January 1 and June 30, 381 cases involved drugs.

An awareness campaign educating the travelling public about the rules, regulations and statutes of Dubai is also being planned.

“We are talking to different government departments about launching this campaign, as we need to educate the incoming public about the laws in Dubai which may be different from laws in their own countries and make sure that they clearly understand the regulations,'' said Rustum.

“The volume of cases we receive has not changed over the last two years. Neither the huge influx of people into Dubai last year nor the current reduction in numbers of travellers has affected the case load,'' said Khalifa Al Darmaki, first prosecutor at the specialised airport prosecution.

“The kind of people we deal with and investigate are different from the rest of the jurisdictions, they are all travellers from all over the world,'' he added.

In one theft case, Al Darmaki cited that an Asian traveller has been found to have stolen items from Dubai Duty Free worth Dh17,000.

“After we questioned him it was revealed that he has been caught twice before stealing at Dubai Duty Free while travelling, but both times he paid the amount and was released by police. On this occasion he received the full weight of prosecution and has been referred to court,'' said Al Darmaki.

“Most of the cases we deal with come from the travelling public, some cases involve employee thefts of left-behind luggage or mobile phones and the like,'' said Rustum.
“Problems between staff, pilots and cabin crew are always handled by the airline. When a crime is involved, police are called in and the legal process takes place as usual.''
Currently the specialised prosecution office has a team of translators who speak Urdu, Hindi, Farsi, Somali, Swahili, French, German and English.

“We have dealt with a lot of celebrities during investigations as they all come to Dubai, but we never allowed any of the media pressure or their high profiles to affect our judgement,'' said Al Darmaki.

Rustum described the media pressure when working with such cases.

“While I was interrogating (Pakistani cricketer) Mohammed Asif, he was interrupted by a phone call to which he responded. After concluding our questioning and putting our recommendations, I was alerted by one of my colleagues that the news already broke on the web with full details of our interview with him,'' he said. “We have to deal with this sort of pressure from time to time and our staff is fully trained to handle it,'' he concluded.