UAE: Woman caught with 55 kilos of cocaine; jailed for 10 years

The Dubai Criminal Court has sentenced a woman to ten years in prison and fined her Dh50,000 after being caught with 55 kilograms of cocaine in her travel bag.

The Court ordered the authorities to deport her from the state after her prison term.

The woman from a Latin American country brought the cocaine into her travel bag and claimed that the bag belonged to someone else in her home country and was unaware of the bag's contents.

The case dates back to November 2021, when a customs inspector suspected the contents of a traveller's bag and asked to pass it through a screening machine at the airport.

According to the inspector's statement, he found an abnormal density inside the bag, and while inspecting it, a jacket was found secretly hidden inside the bag containing substances suspected to be cocaine. The same drug was also hidden at the bottom of an inner layer at the edges of the bag. He referred the woman to the police and the materials to the forensic laboratory.

It was proven by the forensic laboratory report that the seized substance was cocaine, which weighs 55 kilograms.

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During the interrogation, the woman denied knowing the bag's contents and stated that she had received it from someone she did not know.

The person asked her to hand it over to someone in Dubai in exchange for a ticket which cost $700.

The Dubai Public Prosecution charged her with bringing and possessing narcotic substances. The Criminal Court convicted her, imprisoned her, fined her and ordered her to be deported from the state.

• UAE