28-year-old gets life imprisonment, 12 lashes for trafficking over 2kg of cannabis in Sibu

SIBU (Oct 25): The High Court here today sentenced a 28-year-old man to life imprisonment and 12 strokes of the rotan for trafficking over 2kg of cannabis here.

Judge Wong Siong Tung said life imprisonment is defined as 30 years under Section 3 of the Criminal Justice Act 1953 and ordered for the sentence to commence from the date of Iqhwan Syahmie Mohamad’s arrest on Jan 4, 2023.

Iqhwan was charged under Section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, punishable under Subsection 39B(2) of the same Act, which provides for either the death penalty or life imprisonment and a minimum 15 strokes upon conviction.

According to the charge, Iqhwan, who was represented by lawyers Augustine Liom and Leong Lu Fei, trafficked 2.206kg of cannabis at a house in Lorong Permai Jaya here around 11.30am on Jan 4 last year.

In mitigation, Augustine urged the court to impose a 30-year prison term considering that Iqhwan had just gotten married and has a very young child.

Deputy public prosecutor Mark Kenneth Netto told the court that Iqhwan had trafficked a significant quantity of drugs – 11 times more than the minimum statutory amount for trafficking in cannabis type drugs.

He said the motivation behind the crime was for profit and to fuel Iqhwan’s own addiction.

Mark also said Iqhwan is a hardened career criminal with a string of previous convictions for narcotic crimes.