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Defendant alleges planting of evidence court round-up

He accused security agencies of planting a memory stick in one of the defendants’ cars, saying the car was not inspected in the first two days after it was impounded. He said there was no mention of a flash memory among the initial seized items.“We heard about the flash memory, and the owner of the car denied that it was his,” he said.

The man also accused an alleged secret source, who he claimed was a British national hired by authorities to gather incriminating evidence on the defendants, for manufacturing defamatory and offensive comments published in online posts and social networking sites that was later attributed to the defendants and used as evidence.

The defendant claimed authorities had no solid evidence in the case against the 94 accused, while the charge that the group has been trying to control the country was illogical because of the way the emirates were linked together. The man also attacked the prosecution’s evidence from initial questioning, accusing the prosecution of cooking up the arraignment records before it started investigation.

He said statements purportedly from two accused during the interrogation had answers to 11 questions that were word to word similar, even down to the commas and full stops, before he requested the court probe into the alleged forgery.

However, the lawyer started his defence by slamming a recent visit by the Iranian Shura Council delegation to the three UAE occupied islands. The man said he was connected to the islands and the matter was a great concern to him.

The defendant also told the court that he had been jailed, along with his son and daughter’s husband, in harsh conditions while his reputation had been subject to castigation and had been tarnished while he had been locked up.

The defendant had been accused of acting for certain defendants in many cases free of charge, but the man denied this claim, stating the only pro bono case he had taken on in the previous five years was the Ministry of Education.

A second defendant claimed before the court that some of the evidence the prosecution had used to support the charges were collected from outside the country, which was against the law. He said he was confronted by the prosecution with a photo of a mosque under construction and a photo of a renowned Muslim scholar, asking court: “Do you hold people responsible for a person’s photo saved in a cell phone?”

The defence case continues today, which is expected to be the last day of hearing evidence.