Guyanese drug mule sentenced to 10 years in Dubai

DUBAI: A young cocaine mule who burst into tears after being intercepted at the airport was sentenced to ten years in jail and slapped with a Dhs50,000 fine on Thursday.

The Guyanese convict, NR (22), cried before Dubai International Airport officers when they checked her handbag and seized three plastic bags containing 3.013kg of cocaine on May. 18. She was on her way from Brazil to South Africa.

On May 20, when she was referred to the Public Prosecution ,she was quoted complaining: “I was supposed to deliver cocaine to South Africa and receive $3,500 in reward.” When she was asked about the quantity of the contraband, she allegedly added that drug dealers fooled her: “I thought I was carrying only a kilogramme of cocaine. I did not know that they had given me three kilos.”

At the Dubai Criminal Court on Sept.30, she admitted to the charge before Judge Badr Eisa Al Samt. She will be deported after serving her jail term.

A Djiboutian police corporal testified that he had suspected NR in the airport’s transit hall. “She was carrying ‘a men’s leather handbag.’ I asked her the price at which she had bought her ticket but she could not tell.

“She could not even tell me the name of the hotel or place in Johannesburg where she was going to stay.”

A female Emirati corporal at the scanning device added that, “I opened NR’s handbag and seized three plastic bags containing a suspicious white powder. When I asked NR about the plastic bags, she burst into incessant tears.”

During interrogation, she claimed that while in her home country, a female friend called Sofia asked her whether she wanted to make money from a drug deal. Sofia introduced her to Mike, a Nigerian man residing in Brazil, who sent her a ticket to Sao Paulo.

He received her at the airport and took her to one of the hotels where she spent three days. “On the date of my departure, I was inside a taxi when Mike gave me a handbag of drugs to be taken to Johannesburg. He requested that I deliver them to a man in South Africa and that the latter was waiting for me at the airport with a reward of $3,500 if all went well. (The Gulf Today)