Yemen court upholds death sentence against two Pakistanis

Source Dawn
SANAA, June 26: An appeals court in Yemen on Saturday upheld drugs-trafficking sentences against four Pakistanis, condemning two to death and giving 25-year jail terms to the others, AFP reported quoting defence ministry’s website.

Court president Mohammed Al Hakimi confirmed the verdicts handed down in October 2009, condemning Salim Daoud Abdelrahim and Imam Bakhsh Ayub Yakub to death.

The other two convicts, Ghulam Khan Wali Mohammed and Mohammed Sidiq Ahmed, were sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The court “confirmed the death sentences against two Pakistani drug convicts and 25 years imprisonment against another two,” the report said.

The four are accused of smuggling 1,695 kilograms of hashish into Yemen via its coastal territories.

The lower court had acquitted the remaining seven of the group of 11 fishermen who were arrested in Yemen’s territorial waters in May 2008 on board a boat from Pakistan. Their trial began in December last year.

Meanwhile, such arrests and trials in Yemen on drug-related charges have continued to be marred by controversies.

A report in Dawn last month said that Pakistani fishermen who had strayed into Yemen’s waters had often been implicated in cases of drug trafficking allegedly because of rampant corruption in the Arabian peninsula country.

Based on information received from Sanaa, the report said, there were about 70 Pakistanis in Yemeni jails. Most of them have been sentenced to 25-year rigorous imprisonment after having been convicted of drug trafficking. Six are on death row. One prisoner died because of inhuman conditions in Mahra jail.

“I’m fully confident that these poor fishermen, having very little resources, were wrongfully involved in the drugs cases,” Ahmed Ali Sirohey, the deputy head of mission at Pakistan’s Embassy in Yemen, told Dawn.

A group of 24 fishermen serving jail terms in the Mahra province has been particularly unfortunate. Their boats capsized and they surrendered to Yemeni coast guards in anticipation of repatriation to Pakistan. Initially, they were charged with immigration violations and fined 100,000 riyals by local courts. But soon after their release they were rearrested and implicated in a heroine smuggling case.

“One week after our release, a group of seven Yemenis was caught with narcotics. The local officials negotiated with the men and released them after taking bribe. We were then rearrested and tortured to sign confessions written in Arabic,” Bakhsh, one of the prisoners, said in a letter while narrating his ordeal.

After a summary trial, the group was convicted and sentenced to 25-year imprisonment.

The allegations that Yemeni officials took bribe were corroborated by a survey carried out by an anti-corruption body in Yemen indicating that suspects were able to avoid charges by bribing police or judicial officials.