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| Arabia |
| Saudi unaware of judge busted for drugs in UAE |
| 2008-08-13 |
| Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Justice on Tuesday said that it has no information on news reports carried by local newspapers in the United Arab Emirates on the arrest of a Saudi judge by the Dubai police over possession of drugs, according to a statement carried by the official news agency SPA. UAE's Khaleej Times on Monday quoted a Dubai police source as saying that a Saudi judge named Hamad Salim bin Naif, who served as head of an Islamic court, had been arrested in the Gulf emirate on charges of possessing and using drugs. The ministry, in its first official reaction to the report, said that "none of the judges affiliated to the justice ministry has the name mentioned in this report". "The ministry stated that it has no information about the report published in the Emirati newspaper Khaleej Times and quoted by Agence France Presse and then Internet sites about the Dubai police's arrest of a Saudi judge," the official SPA news agency said. According to the English-language Khaleej Times, the suspect confessed that he and his wife take drugs and said he brought the confiscated hashish from Saudi Arabia for their personal use. Sharia courts in Saudi Arabia impose tough penalties for drug-related charges, and drug trafficking is punishable by death in the ultra-conservative kingdom. The United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a member, also imposes severe penalties for all drug-related offences. Four years in prison is the usual sentence for possession while trafficking carries the death penalty. |
| Posted by:Fred |