almotamar.net - The Court of Appeal's First Criminal Division ordered the deportation of three Syrians charged with smuggling Yemeni antiquities and traditional relics to outside the country.
At its session chaired by Judge Hamoud Al-Hirdi, the Court fined the three convicts � Ayman Mohammed Hussein Dhaher, Ramiz Mohammed Salem Al-Sheikh, Mohammed Salem Al-Sheikh and Bakeel Ahmed Mutahar � an amount of 400 thousand riyals each. This amount is to be paid to the Antiquities Support Fund.
The three Syrian convicts are to be released after having served a sentence in prison and that Yemeni national Bakeel Ahmed Mutahar is to be imprisoned for the same period, the judgment ruled.
The Court also ordered the license of the convicted Yemeni national to be nullified. Bakeel used to work in Souk Al-Milh, the Old City of Sana'a, as a salesman of gifts and souvenirs. According to the judgment, his field of activity is to be changed.
The mobile phone, the crime tool, is to be confiscated to the Public Treasury after deleting the obscene images on it, the judgment ruled.
This recent judgment has repealed the first-instance verdict issued by the Capital City's Eastern Court in mid 2005.
Police detained the convicts early last year at Haradh, an outpost on Yemeni-Saudi borders, with a number of antiquities with them. They intended to smuggle them abroad. During investigation, they confessed they had previously smuggled antiquities to neighboring Saudi Arabia.
The Antiquities Prosecution appealed in May last year a first-instance rule passed on the convicts by the Capital City's Eastern Court. According to that verdict, the convicts were to be fined three million riyals each if they re-committed the crime of smuggling or trafficking antiquities.