A criminal court has sentenced an Asian woman to five years in jail on charges of possessing cocaine in the transit hall of the Doha airport, the local Al-Sharq daily has reported.
The Criminal Court said the narcotic substance was brought onboard a routine flight into the State of Qatar and the woman was caught by the authorities at the transit hall of Doha International Airport.
The court said that apart from the jail term, the woman would have to pay a fine of QR200,000 and would also be deported upon completion of the punishment.
The woman was accused to have agreed with an unidentified person in a foreign country to carry 1.3kg of cocaine in exchange for $5,000.
This unidentified person had handed over a laptop computer bag containing the narcotic in a secret pocket to the woman. The court said that the accused was aware of the contents of the bag.
At the Doha airport on transit to an Arab country capital, police became suspicious of the woman’s bag, who also resorted to crying and later fainted. The substance found was proved to be banned narcotics by the criminal laboratory.
Source: Gulftimes