Salim Bashir, Ruswiza & Co.

On the court record

A criminal-defence record reaching the Federal Court, engaging both the evidential questions of knowledge and possession in drug cases and constitutional challenges to criminal-procedure provisions.

Salim Bashir, Ruswiza & Co. is recorded in the corpus in criminal work, spanning drug offences and constitutional criminal procedure and reaching the Federal Court. A pair of linked High Court matters, in which the firm acted for the appellant, concerned trafficking under section 39B(1)(a) read with sections 12(2) and 12(3) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 in relation to methamphetamine, where the decisive issue was proof of the element of knowledge — the drugs having been found in a house whose key was located in the accused's car, raising the familiar question of whether that connection was enough to fix the accused with knowledge and possession. In a Federal Court matter the firm again appeared for the appellant, this time in an appeal engaging the offence of rape under section 376(1) of the Penal Code together with a significant constitutional challenge: whether the procedures under section 265A(2) and (3) of the Criminal Procedure Code are unconstitutional, and whether denying the appellant a right to be heard at the inquiry stage under those provisions violated the principles of natural justice entrenched in Articles 5 and 8 of the Federal Constitution. The appeal also considered whether the failure to have regard to the appellant's section 112 statement amounted to non-compliance with section 182A of the Criminal Procedure Code, and the scope of corroboration, the court observing that corroborative evidence is not confined to the oral evidence of an independent witness and that credible circumstantial evidence can also corroborate. Across these matters the firm is recorded conducting serious criminal defence at the highest levels, where the argument moves between the ordinary evidential questions of knowledge and possession and constitutional challenges to the fairness of criminal-procedure provisions. In the drug matters the location of the house key inside the accused's car was the pivot on which the element of knowledge was said to rest, a familiar evidential battleground in trafficking prosecutions.