KUWAIT CITY, March 13: A Court of Appeals amended an earlier judgment, which had sentenced five Kuwaitis accused of falsification of salary and employment continuity certificates to five years jail term in absentia, by refraining from pronouncing a judgment. The suspects falsified documents that enabled them obtain KD 100,000 loan from a local bank.
The charge sheet accused the defendants, three men and two women, of presenting falsified salary certificates showing that they were employees of a cleaning company with inflated salaries to get the loan. The defendant lawyer Abdullah Al-Elanda pleaded that the judge should refrain from pronouncing judgment based on Article 18 of the criminal code. He claimed that the fifth defendant presented the documents because she didn’t know they were fake since she believed she was employed in the company. He added that the fifth defendant had paid back the amount in question to the bank.

Man absolved: The Criminal Court overturned the verdict of a lower court, which had previously sentenced a Kuwaiti to one year imprisonment with hard labor for selling liquor.
Case files indicate the investigation officer put the Kuwaiti under surveillance after receiving information that he is trading in liquor. The officer later obtained a search and arrest warrant and then arranged an entrapment, which led to the arrest of the Kuwaiti.
However, the Kuwaiti’s lawyer, Faisal Eyal Al-Enezi, argued in court that the search and arrest warrant was dated after the arrest of his client.  He claimed it was a case between the investigation officer and his client, so he asked the court to acquit his client. The court then ruled in favor of the Kuwaiti, affirming his innocence.

Case adjourned: The Criminal Court presided over by Justice Abdul-Nasser Khuraibet adjourned a lawsuit filed by State Security against two military personnel to April 3.
The Public Prosecution charged the defendants for abusing their positions as military personnel to obtain bullets, a box of machine gun and 34 pistol pellets. The defendants have pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to smuggle weapons from a military base.

Court prohibits sale: The Court of First Instance ordered suspension of the sale of a real estate property when the husband took it back from his wife and cancelled all files related to it at the Ministry of Justice.
Case files indicate the wife had earlier asked the court to order her husband to allow her to sell half of the property that he has given to her.  The case was referred to the appropriate court because the building cannot be divided into two. The husband then filed a request at another court to rescind his decision to give half of the property to his wife. The court granted his request when he said that he wanted to reclaim the property because his wife was ungrateful; hence, she does not deserve it.