DUBAI // A businessman who said he did not know that cannabis seeds were banned in the UAE when he was found with more than 13kg of them on arrival in Dubai has been found not guilty.
Dubai Criminal Court made the ruling on Tuesday after 55-year-old Iranian AZ had been charged with smuggling and possession of the seeds on June 27 last year, with a further charge of having the intent to supply to others having already been dropped by the court.
Prosecutors said that on the date of the incident a customs inspector at Dubai airport thought there was something odd with the Iranian’s bag when it went through the X-ray scanner.
“I suspected in a plastic bag inside his luggage that contained seeds and when I asked him about it he said it was food for birds and that if it was banned in Dubai, he didn’t know that,” testified customs inspector AS, 27.
She said he told her that he brought the seeds for a friend in Dubai. He was referred to airport police who seized the seeds and apprehended the man but he will now walk free after the ruling.
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How Alia's experiment will help humans get to Mars
Alia’s winning experiment examined how genes might change under the stresses caused by being in space, such as cosmic radiation and microgravity.
Her samples were placed in a machine on board the International Space Station. called a miniPCR thermal cycler, which can copy DNA multiple times.
After the samples were examined on return to Earth, scientists were able to successfully detect changes caused by being in space in the way DNA transmits instructions through proteins and other molecules in living organisms.
Although Alia’s samples were taken from nematode worms, the results have much bigger long term applications, especially for human space flight and long term missions, such as to Mars.
It also means that the first DNA experiments using human genomes can now be carried out on the ISS.
Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989
Director: Goran Hugo Olsson
Rating: 5/5