JEDDAH – The Jeddah General Court sentenced Tuesday Egyptian lawyer Ahmed Al-Jizawi, who was convicted of drug trafficking, to five years in prison and 300 lashes. Another Egyptian arrested in the same case was sentenced to six years in prison and 400 lashes, while the third defendant, a Saudi, was jailed for two years and will receive 100 lashes. The verdicts can be appealed within one month. Al-Jizawi, the first defendant in the case, was arrested at Jeddah's King Abdul Aziz International Airport in April last year while attempting to smuggle narcotics into the Kingdom. Al-Jizawi, who arrived on Umrah visa together with his wife, was caught with 21,380 capsules of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, a controlled medicine containing alprazolam that is classified by Saudi authorities as a narcotic and is sold only under prescription. The pills were stashed inside baby powder containers and wooden boxes alongside copies of the Holy Qur'an. Al-Jizawi, the first defendant, and the second defendant, also an Egyptian, were found guilty of smuggling narcotic pills while the Saudi was convicted of taking drugs. The lashes will be implemented at the rate of 50 per month. The final verdict in the case was delivered at the session held under heavy security and the reporters had to surrender their mobile phones during the duration of the court session which lasted over 15 minutes. Yasir Al-Olwani, representative of the Egyptian Consulate in Jeddah, was also present in the court. While delivering the verdict, the presiding judge turned down the public prosecutor's demand to hand down the death penalty for Al-Jizawi. The judge then asked the three defendants, one after the other, if they accepted the ruling and they all replied negatively. Then, the judge allowed them to challenge the verdict in the Appeals Court within 30 days. “These verdicts are lenient” given the defendants' “good morals ... and the lack of judicial precedents,” the judge said at the hearing. When the session began, the judge sought clarifications from the second defendant about his statements that he had made confessions under coercion, asking him whether he had any evidence for it, to which the Egyptian's reply was in the negative. Then, the judge asked the public prosecutor about the type of narcotic pills seized from them. The prosecutor replied that it was a prescription drug. The judge noted that all the defendants had repeatedly denied their earlier confessions of the crime and the charges leveled against them by the prosecution. The Egyptian defendants also failed to produce evidence to prove their claims that they had confessed under duress.
