Man paid Dh1 per box to transport drugs receives Dh50k fine and jail sentence

A man who agreed to deliver 144 boxes containing drugs for Dh1 each will now have to pay a fine of Dh50,000 after he was convicted of possession.
Dubai Criminal Court sentenced the 25-year-old Pakistani to three years in prison to be followed by deportation, as well as the fine.
Records show that the defendant accepted Dh144 for the shipment of banned amphetamines and tranquilisers, and was caught while moving them from his pick-up truck to a hotel in Dubai.
Prosecutors said the driver was handling 293 kilograms of Valium, Xanax, Rivotril and methamphetamines.
Last month in court, the accused denied being knowingly involved in the smuggling or sale of drugs.
"I didn't know what the boxes contained. I was hired by a man and paid Dh1 for each box I carried," he told a judge.
An officer said police had tracked the shipment from Jebel Ali Port after a tip-off. "As part of our investigations, we discovered that a suspicious shipment was released from Jebel Ali Port," a 52-year-old officer testified.
He said that on November 21 last year, the team tracked the shipment to the fruit and vegetable market in Ras Al Khor, where they saw the suspect loading boxes into his pick-up truck.
"We followed him to the Naif area [of Deira] and watched as he unloaded the entire shipment and started carrying the boxes into a hotel across the street."
When they arrested the man, officers found drugs wrapped in rolls of fabric inside the boxes.