Two drug dealers receive over 2 year prison sentence

AMMAN — The Court of Cassation has upheld a June State Security Court (SSC) ruling, sentencing two drug dealers to over two years in prison after convicting them of possessing illegal narcotics in Amman in January of last year.

The court declared the defendants guilty of obtaining illegal narcotics with the intent of selling the drugs in the local market on January 12.

The court decided to sentence each of the two defendants to three years each in prison and imposed a JD6,000 fine on the two men.

However, the SSC decided to reduce the prison terms to 30 and 24 months respectively and maintained the fine on both to give them “a second chance in life”.

Court documents said the Anti-Narcotics Department (AND) learned the defendants were in possession of various illegal narcotics and sent a team to monitor them.

“The AND agents raided their house and found various illegal narcotics and over JD5,000 in cash,” the court documents said.

The SSC prosecution charged that the cash “found in their possession was collected from the selling of the illegal narcotics,” according to the court documents.

The defendants contested the SSC’s ruling through their lawyers, who argued that the SSC prosecution “failed to provide solid evidence to implicate their clients”.

Meanwhile, the SSC prosecution office asked the higher court to uphold the sentence and the fine imposed on the defendants.

The higher court maintained that the SSC had followed the proper procedures in issuing the sentences against the defendants.

The Court of Cassation judges presiding were Mohammad Ibrahim, Hayel Amr, Majid Azab, Fawzi Nahar and Ibrahim Abu Shamma.