Son visiting UAE blames resident father for asking him to bring banned poppy seeds

A Pakistani arrested with almost 2kg of poppy seeds on him says his dad asked him to bring them for cooking purposes.

DUBAI // A man arrested bringing more than a kilogram of poppy seeds into Dubai blamed his father, saying that he only did it because he was told to.

Prosecutors said the 31-year-old Pakistani visitor was arrested at Dubai International Airport on March 30 after a bag containing 1.7kg of the banned seeds were found on his person.

The son was coming to visit his father, who is a resident in the UAE.

“At Terminal 3, he arrived to the last check point before getting out of the airport,” said an Emirati inspector, adding that a colleague suspected something untoward was in his bag, so they scanned it.

“The X-ray showed suspicious density in the bag and we had it opened and searched manually,” said the inspector. They found a lot of food and sweets in the bag, he said, as well as a plastic bag containing the banned seeds.

“He told us that he was asked by his father to bring the seeds in order to use them in cooking,” added the inspector.

A lab report confirmed that the seeds could be planted and grown.

The next hearing is on September 27.