PUTRAJAYA, July 31 — A limousine driver escaped the hangman’s noose after his charge was reduced from trafficking in 1.428kg of cannabis to possession of the drug.

Saifulizam Abdul Jalil, 51, was sentenced to 13 years in jail by the Court of Appeal three-member panel comprising Justices Datuk Hadhariah Syed Ismail, Datuk Collin Lawrence Sequerah and Datuk Azmi Ariffin.

Justice Hadhariah, who led the panel, ordered Saifulizam to serve the jail sentence from the date of his arrest on April 29, 2019.

The court spared him the whipping sentence as he is above 50 years old.

Earlier, his lawyer Muhammad Amirrul Jamaluddin informed the court that the Attorney-General’s Chambers has accepted his client’s representation to reduce the charge to possession and this was confirmed by deputy public prosecutor Noorhisham Mohd Jaafar

On March 19, 2021, the High Court in Shah Alam found Saifulizam guilty of trafficking the drug and sentenced him to death.

Saifulizam, a father of three children, committed the offence in a house in Taman Dahlia in Sepang, Selangor at 10.45am on April 29, 2019.

According to the facts of the case, a police team, acting on information, raided the house. They inspected the house and found a black bag containing the drugs. — Bernama