Manager loses plea in cocaine case
DUBAI: A manager who purchased drugs for two women in exchange for spending a night with them has failed to convince the Appeals Court to clear him.
The American manager, 47, facilitated cocaine abuse to two women, possessed a plastic bag containing 0.71g cocaine and abused cocaine, benzyolecgonine and alcohol, prosecutors revealed.
He denied facilitation and admitted consumption. He said, “I took very little of it and police seized me with some. I was drunk by and unaware I was taking cocaine. Someone handed me a piece.” The Criminal Court sent him to ive years in jail to be followed by deportation and slapped him with a Dhs30,000 ine. He appealed seeking to challenge the ruling but the Appeals Court rejected his plea.
His lawyer argued at the Appeals Court on Oct.17, “He met both women at a hotel bar.
They requested him to contact a man to bring some ‘wine.’ He was not aware they were using the word for drugs.” An
Emirati lieutenant testified that a source alerted the Antinarcotics Department the defendant was consuming drugs. And that he had a stash of cocaine he was planning to sell to drug addicts.
Police went to his apartment at a Jumeirah area hotel at around 7:15pm on May 7 and found him inside with a woman –who was referred to the Misdemenours Court over drug abuse charges.
Police frisked the woman and seized nothing with her. They walked her to her hotel room as part of the investigations. They found there her female cohort –also referred to the Misdemenours Court.
A female corporal combed the room and seized a ladies handbag above a Comodino.
The bag contained a cigarette pack containing two tissue papers stuffed with a cocaine- like substance.
The corporal seized another tissue paper containing a banknote stained with residues of a cocaine-like substance. The woman during police questioning confessed and said the bag belonged to her.
She added that the drugs belonged to
her and her cohort. They had obtained them from the defendant against cash. Both said they were at a nightclub with him when he offered to consume drugs with them.
The defendant on being questioned narrated that he met both women at the nightclub and they requested him to purchase cocaine for them in exchange for spending that night with him inside his lat.
Both women provided him the phone number of a cocaine peddler. He contacted the peddler –a man who was referred to the Federal High Court in Abu Dhabi- and asked him for cocaine worth Dhs10, 000.
The defendant further argued that both women escorted him to the hotel lobby and pointed him to the peddler. He paid him the cash and the women received the cocaine.
They returned with him inside. A Comorian policeman said he was on duty at Al Barsha Police Station detention ward when oficers brought the defendant. “I frisked him and seized a plastic bag containing a suspicious substance inside his trousers pocket.”