A British man who was caught smuggling nearly 8kg of cocaine into Dubai will be jailed for ten years.
The transit passenger, 60, had landed at Dubai International Airport on his way to Guinea from Brazil on May 11 when customs officers became suspicious about his luggage.
Officials searched the defendant's luggage and found the drugs stashed inside plastic cylinders in a bag.
He said he had been asked to transport the cylinders to Guinea by a man in Brazil — but claimed he was unaware they contained drugs.
“We had the luggage checked and found that one of the bags was strangely thick," a senior Emirati customs officer said.
"When he was confronted, he said the empty cylinders belonged to him but the ones with the cocaine inside belonged to a Brazilian man who gave them to him to deliver to Guinea,” the officer said.
At Dubai Criminal Court last month, the man denied a drug smuggling charge and claimed the drugs had been planted on him without his knowledge.
But he has now been found guilty of the charge.
“I'm not guilty," he said. "In fact I am a victim of someone I don't know who must have planted the drugs in my bags without me knowing.
"As God as my witness, I didn't know the drugs were there.”
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison followed by deportation. He was also fined Dh50,000.
