DUBAI // A drug addict tried to save his friend who had overdosed by cutting his leg to reduce the heroin in his blood.
The unemployed Emirati, 22, was charged at Dubai Criminal Court with consuming drugs and facilitating consumption to his dead friend, who was found in a hotel room after police, acting on a tip-off, searched the Emirati’s house and found the room key.
On February 28 Dubai Police Anti-Narcotics officers headed to the man’s home in Al Hamriyah, Bur Dubai, and he was arrested.
Police found the hotel room key in the defendant’s pocket and, when he was asked about the room and who was there, he said no one was there. Police went to the room anyway and found a dead body on the bed.
During questioning, the defendant confessed that the dead man was his friend and they had been taking heroin together. He said his friend had overdosed and he tried to help save his life by making a deep cut in the right side of his right leg to help the blood flow out and reduce the amount of heroin in his system. However, the man still died as a result of the overdose, not blood-loss.
The man said he gave his dead friend a bath before putting his clothes on and placing him on the bed. He was arrested seven hours later the same day.
When quizzed about where he got the drugs, he led police to his 24-year-old Emirati dealer, who police said was arrested at his home in Al Khawaneej on March 1. Police found heroin and 22 tablets of a controlled medicine there.
Both men were detained and then charged with consuming drugs and possessing drugs.
The 22-year-old was alone charged with facilitating consumption to his dead friend.
When interrogated by prosecutors, the 22-year-old said that he injected his friend with heroin after which the man started suffering from spasms. He said he cut his leg with a razor blade, after which he claimed his friend got better, so he left him to sleep in the hotel room alone before coming back to find him dead.
The defendant also claimed he was assaulted by CID officers who were questioning him.
At Dubai Criminal Court, the 22-year-old denied providing his friend with heroin.
“I never gave him heroin but I possessed and consumed [it],” he said, while the other suspect confessed but said that he was not arrested at home but, in fact, he had handed himself into a rehabilitation centre in Abu Dhabi, where he said he was arrested from.
A verdict is expected on October 30.
salamir@thenational.ae
