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Retrial ordered in burglary case

ABU DHABI — The Federal Supreme Court has quashed an acquittal judgment passed in favour of a person caught on charges of burglary in Sharjah, and referred the case back to the Court of Appeal for a fresh hearing.

The Court of First Instance had earlier sentenced the accused to four months in jail followed by deportation.

Court records show that the Public Prosecution charged an expatriate, Jamal Hassan, with trespassing and burgling Abdullah Khamees' house, and appealed that he be penalised in consonance with Islamic Shariah and the Federal Penal Code.

The Sharjah Shariah Court of First Instance, in September last year, ordered the accused to serve four months in jail, followed by deportation. The accused contested the verdict at the Sharjah Shariah Court of Appeal which scrapped the earlier judgment last December for lack of conclusive evidence. Although the accused's fingerprints had been collected from the burgled house.

The prosecution, on the grounds that the accused's fingerprints were collected from the burgled house and the fact that he had confessed to having burgled many houses, moved the Federal Supreme Court contending that the previous ruling should be declared null and void.

The apex court, in its hearing earlier this month, sustained the prosecution's appeal and ordered retrial of case before a new bench of judges.

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