A former university student in Malaysia has had his life ruined for the heinous crime of possessing a plant.
Nur Arif Nur Akil, 26, was sentenced to 30 years in prison and a dozen strikes to the buttocks with a cane on Thursday for trafficking almost 2 kilograms of cannabis in 2020. He was apprehended with 1,900 grams at a supermarket, a quantity far exceeding that of a personal stash.
However, despite pleas from Akil’s lawyer to consider his young age and future, the court’s deputy public prosecutor didn’t think that punishment was sufficient, for whatever reason. He suggested that Akil should be put to death for his involvement in the nation’s illicit cannabis business.
The news was first reported by the country’s government media agency Bernama.
“Whether it is a soft drug or otherwise, it does not matter because the negative effects on society are the same,” Deputy Public Prosecutor Ala’uddin Baharom said. “In this case, the accused was a university student and should have been aware of the consequences and effects of his involvement in drugs.”
The trial has been ongoing since April 2023. Thankfully for Akil, Malaysia’s government abolished the mandatory death penalty for non-violent drug offences like these last year. Of the 1,341 people on death row in Malaysia in 2022 prior to the move, 905 of them had been convicted of drug trafficking.
Nonetheless, if the country should choose to abolish draconian punishments like the one he faces now, he may still have a chance at an amended sentence down the road due to still being alive.
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Trafficking of crystal meth a frequent occurrence
The country just made a much more significant drug bust than the bale of grass seized from Akil.
On Tuesday, the Royal Malaysian Customs Department discovered 380 kilograms of methamphetamine bound for Australia at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. It was discovered inside a series of suspicious-looking pallet boxes disguised as Chinese herbal tea.
Hard drug trafficking in the nation is a recurrent problem. Two days later, the country’s North Sumatra Police seized six kilos of meth from another trafficker on the Malaysia-Indonesia border.
The nation is a key transit point for drugs, particularly meth. Malaysian authorities arrested almost 29,000 people in 2022 for various drug-related offences.
rowan@mugglehead.com
