Dubai: Woman jailed for using friend’s passport to collect drug-soaked paper shipment

A Dubai court has sentenced a Central Asian woman to three months in jail and ordered her deportation after she used a copy of her friend’s passport to collect a parcel that turned out to contain papers soaked in narcotic substances. The Dubai Criminal Court also acquitted the friend, ruling she had no involvement in the crime.

The case began in April this year when a customs inspector grew suspicious of a parcel arriving from a European country. A detailed manual inspection revealed that the package contained sheets saturated with narcotics. Authorities immediately launched a controlled operation to track the intended recipient.

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According to investigation records, the accused arrived at the shipping company’s office after being contacted to collect the parcel. She presented a printed copy of a passport, claiming it was her own identification. The customs team and police officers arrested her on the spot.

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A police officer testified that the woman insisted her name matched the details on the passport copy. However, a data check revealed she was using the passport copy of another woman, who was promptly summoned for questioning. The passport owner denied any knowledge of the shipment or the incident.

Investigators later established that the two women had met months earlier when the friend had lived in Dubai. She told prosecutors she had given her passport copy to the accused solely to help her apply for a new visit visa to re-enter the UAE. The accused, however, kept a copy and used it to attempt to collect the illegal shipment.

The defendant denied importing narcotics, claiming the parcel did not belong to her. She alleged that a Gulf national she met in Dubai’s Jumeirah area asked her to collect what he described as a “book” sent from Europe because he did not speak English. She claimed she had no idea the parcel contained drug-soaked material.

The court dismissed her defence, ruling that her deliberate use of another person’s passport copy demonstrated clear intent to conceal her identity while collecting the illegal shipment. Her friend, meanwhile, was cleared of all charges, with the court confirming she neither knew of nor participated in the crime.

The woman will be deported after completing her three-month jail sentence.