UAE court hands Israeli woman of Palestinian origin life sentence on drug charges

The United Arab Emirates has sentenced a Palestinian citizen of Israel convicted on drug charges to life in prison, her lawyer said Thursday.

The court had initially sentenced her to death but cancelled it last week. Israel says it has closely followed the case in the UAE, which normalised relations with Israel in 2020 as part of the controversial Abraham Accords brokered by the Trump administration.

Fida Kiwan, a 43-year-old resident of the Israeli city of Haifa, was arrested in March 2021. Authorities say they found marijuana, cocaine and MDMA pills in the apartment where she was staying, and she was convicted on charges of intending to sell drugs. She denied the allegations.

Mordechai Tzivin, an Israeli lawyer representing her, said she was sentenced to life in prison. He said the law enforcement system in the UAE is "very accurate" and that there is a precedent for amnesty in cases in which heavy sentences are issued.

There was no immediate comment from Israel or the UAE.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry had welcomed the decision to cancel the death penalty last week, saying it was "pleased that the efforts on the legal channels as well as other channels led to the cancellation of the death sentence".

Israelis have flocked in their thousands to the UAE since the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020.

The accords have been slammed as a betrayal by Palestinians, who have pointed out that they reward Israel while it continues to occupy the West Bank and besiege the Gaza Strip.

The UAE has some of the world's most restrictive drug laws. Trafficking typically carries a life sentence and possession a shorter jail sentence.

While UAE law allows for the death penalty in certain cases, capital punishment is rarely carried out. The last known executions were in 2011 and 2014, against two men convicted of murder.