Sayed Abdulaal Okaz/Saudi GazetteCAIRO – A Saudi citizen who was sentenced to death by an Egyptian court in 2010 for allegedly attempting to smuggle 23 kilograms of cocaine hidden inside his vehicle into Egypt at the beginning of 2009 will have another trial next month. Lafi Al-Shammary will now appear before Al-Ismaliya Court late February 2013 after his death sentence was recently revoked, thanks to a team of lawyers appointed by the Saudi Embassy in Egypt. The team, appointed shortly after his arrest, succeeded in securing a retrial in June 2012 after lengthy court hearings. The lawyers' defense statement, of which Okaz obtained a copy, proved to the court that the defendant bought his four-wheel vehicle, in which the cocaine was stashed, eight days before entering Egypt. This demonstrated that he did not know about the cocaine, the statement pointed out. It also claimed that he had not entered Egypt since 1995, refuting Egyptian intelligence officers' claim that Al-Shammary came to Egypt to smuggle a huge amount of cocaine. The lawyers maintained that there was no logic in this claim because the last time the defendant was in the country was in 1995. The lawyers told the court that the anti-drug enforcement officers did not obtain a search warrant before searching the defendant's car and could not provide any information to the court about where and how the cocaine was obtained and where it was going to be delivered in Egypt.
