Foreigner sentenced to life imprisonment for attempted transport of drugs

Criminal Court has sentenced a foreigner to life imprisonment for attempting to transport drugs to Gaafu Dhaalu Madaveli.

The sentence was levied upon Nozir Ahmed, a Bangladeshi citizen, last Tuesday.

The Criminal Court sentence stated that Police had discovered Nozir to have been in possession of intoxicants on the 14th of December 2010, after the police made an inspection of Jazeera boat docked in Gaafu Dhaalu Thinadhoo, where the boat was making a transit.

The sentence also stated that Nozir had confessed that he had gone into the wheelhouse of the boat and brought out a cigarette box and handed it to the police, which had contained drugs.

It also stated that an analysis of the substances inside the cigarette box had shown that it contained 15.52 grams of Tetrahydrocannabinol, and 7.72 grams of Canabinol, and that Nozir had to take responsibility for the contents inside the cigarette box, and had not been able to prove who had transported the box to the boat.

“…that the people who transported the cigarette box to Jazeera boat had told [him] to show it to the people who would come to collect it, and even though Nozir Ahmed had said that he accepted it after being threatened, as Nozir Ahmed has been unable to produce to court the people who had handed him the substance, and as Nozir Ahmed has been unable to prove that he was threatened, and as Nozir Ahmed was the person who was discovered to have been in possession of the substance, and as Nozir Ahmed has not been able to prove how he had come to be in possession of the substance, under the Article 2 (a) of the (former) Drugs Act, it has been declared that Nozir Ahmed is convicted of being in possession for intoxicants with the intention to sell, under the penalties prescribed under Article (2) (b) of the aforementioned Act, the court now sentences Bangladeshi citizen Nozir Ahmed to a lifetime in prison,” the Criminal Court sentence stated.