Agencies

• Convicted for trafficking drugs, he has appealed to the royal family for help

Kuwait, Aug 14: Smuggling drugs in the Gulf is a high-risk enterprise, with frequent death sentences for dealers and mules. It is possible Sheikh Talal Nasser al-Sabah believed being a relative of Kuwait’s rulers would protect him. Now, with a death sentence hanging over him for drug trafficking, the oil-rich emirate is waiting to see whether the strict rule of law or the kinship ties of the ruling family will prevail.

The sheikh, who is in his fifties, was caught by Kuwaiti police with 10kg of cocaine and 165lb of hashish. When sentencing him to death, Judge Humoud al-Mutwatah said that he had “willingly walked the path of evil” and deserved no mercy.

It was the first time that a member of a Gulf royal family had been condemned to death by a court, and is widely seen as a test case for the impartiality of the law in a country where the convict’s relative, the Emir, could pardon his wayward kinsman.

The sheikh was the nephew of a previous Emir of Kuwait, Jaber al-Sabah, who died in 2006, and is one of hundreds of members of the huge ruling family. Lawyers at the time hailed the sentence as a sign of the impartiality of the law. Najib al-Wugayyan, a prominent criminal lawyer, called the verdict “a magnificent indication to all that nobody is above the law”.

However, Sheik al-Sabah has announced in the Kuwaiti press that he has appealed to the Emir to grant a pardon, and that senior members of the Royal Family were lobbying for him with the country’s ruler.