DUBAI // A businessman who said he did not know that cannabis seeds were banned in the UAE when he was found with more than 13kg of them on arrival in Dubai has been found not guilty.
Dubai Criminal Court made the ruling on Tuesday after 55-year-old Iranian AZ had been charged with smuggling and possession of the seeds on June 27 last year, with a further charge of having the intent to supply to others having already been dropped by the court.
Prosecutors said that on the date of the incident a customs inspector at Dubai airport thought there was something odd with the Iranian’s bag when it went through the X-ray scanner.
“I suspected in a plastic bag inside his luggage that contained seeds and when I asked him about it he said it was food for birds and that if it was banned in Dubai, he didn’t know that,” testified customs inspector AS, 27.
She said he told her that he brought the seeds for a friend in Dubai. He was referred to airport police who seized the seeds and apprehended the man but he will now walk free after the ruling.
salamir@thenational.ae
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What is graphene?
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged like honeycomb.
It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were "playing about" with sticky tape and graphite - the material used as "lead" in pencils.
Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But as they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.
By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment had led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.
At the time, many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable. But examined under a microscope, the material remained stable, and when tested was found to have incredible properties.
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But the 'sticky tape' method would not work on an industrial scale. Since then, scientists have been working on manufacturing graphene, to make use of its incredible properties.
In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Their discovery meant physicists could study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties.
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