PUTRAJAYA – A businessman today escaped the gallows after the Federal Court commuted his death sentence to 30 years in prison for trafficking 9.528kg of cannabis.
The three-judge panel, headed by justice Datuk Zabariah Mohd Yusof, upheld Mohammad Firdaus Mohsin’s drug trafficking conviction and dismissed his appeal against it.
In delivering the court’s decision, justice Zabariah, however, set aside the death sentence imposed and commuted it to 30 years in prison.
Firdaus, 40, was also ordered to be given 12 strokes of the rotan.
The other two judges presiding were Datuk Harmindar Singh Dhaliwal and Datuk Abdul Karim Abdul Jalil.
On December 3, 2021, the Shah Alam High Court convicted Firdaus of drug trafficking at about 10pm on March 28, 2017, along Jalan Bukit in front of the Kajang KTMB train station in Hulu Langat, Selangor.
On August 2, last year, the Court of Appeal upheld Firdaus’s conviction and death sentence.
According to case facts, a police officer approached Firdaus and asked him to open his bags, leading to the discovery of several slabs of compressed dried leaves in one of them, later confirmed by the Chemistry Department to be cannabis.
In his defence, Firdaus claimed that the bag did not belong to him but to an Uber driver. He said that he was taking care of it while waiting for the Uber driver to park the car.
He claimed he travelled from Penang to Kuala Lumpur to attend an event and was waiting for his uncle to pick him up and take him to his house in Sg Ramal, Kajang.
During the trial, the Uber driver, Mohd Sabri Salleh, testified that he received a booking from Firdaus through the now-defunct Uber app to send the latter from KL Sentral to the Kajang KTM station.
He said he saw Firdaus carrying the bags and placing them beside himself in the back seat of the car.
Deputy public prosecutor Zulkpli Abdullah appeared for the prosecution, while Firdaus was represented by lawyers Muhammad Rafique Rashid Ali and Nur Mustahir Md Nor. – June 20, 2024