KUWAIT CITY, July 24: The Court of Cassation, headed by Judge Abdullah Al-Jassem, confirmed that it is not permissible for a father to enter his son’s room and search it without the latter’s permission. Based on this principle, a citizen was acquitted of drugs consumption; since his father entered his room without permission, found the drugs in his room and reported the crime of drug use to the police.

According to the case files, the father of the accused informed the police that his son was in an abnormal state – agitated and nervous – after he refused to give him the money he needed to buy drugs. When the police officers arrived at the house, the father directed them to the location of his son and they arrested him. However, the son violently resisted arrest, causing injuries to the officers as described in the forensic medical report. The police officers managed to subdue the accused and referred him to the police station, along with the suspicious green herbal substance and six capsules.

Lawyer for the accused, Attorney Abdul Mohsen Al-Qattan, pointed out the contradictions in the witnesses’ statements, the maliciousness of the accusation, its fabrication and the unreasonableness of the incident. Al-Qattan argued that the evidence which the Public Prosecution relied on in proving the accusation against the appellant is not valid as his client’s father reported to the police that he committed the crime of consuming narcotic substances without strong evidence as stipulated in Article 1/54 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and Trials.

He said it was merely the father’s statement that may be true or false. He added the father entering the son’s private room, searching it without the son’s permission, and finding the seized items in the folds of the son’s clothes is considered an invalid search. The evidence that resulted from such a search, what was found in his room or the result of the analysis of his urine sample by forensics is invalidated based on the decision of the prosecution.

By Jaber Al-Hamoud
Al-Seyassah/Arab Times Staff and Agencies