Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 36

Summary: - A police officer's summoning of the appellant because he was accused of a crime and to question him about the accusation. This is not physical interference infringing or restricting his personal liberty. It is not to be confused with the arrest procedure prohibited to a police officer. Rather, it constitutes evidence-gathering, inquiry and investigation procedures. These are valid procedures. The court may rely on the indications and evidence resulting from them. An example concerning the judgment's reliance on the statements of the officer who conducted them. Rule: It is established that the duties imposed by law on police officers include accepting reports received by them concerning crimes, conducting, themselves or through their subordinates, the necessary inquiries into facts of which they become aware in any manner whatsoever, and obtaining all clarifications and evidentiary information leading to the establishment or negation of the facts reported to them or which they observe themselves. Articles 40 and 41 of the Criminal Procedure and Trials Law also authorize police officers, while gathering evidence and conducting inquiries, to hear the statements of persons possessing information about criminal acts and their perpetrators, and to question the accused about them. That being so, and since it is established from the papers and the statements of the officer involved in the incident during the investigations that they contained nothing indicating that he arrested the appellant or conducted any investigation with him—in the aforementioned sense—as it is established from that officer's statements during the investigations that the appellant was referred to him by the Deportation Department to be questioned about the accusation surrounding him, namely that he brought narcotic substances in for prisoners, he conducted inquiries concerning that accusation which revealed that the appellant brought mobile phones in for the other defendants in return for sums of money. The other 2 defendants admitted to him that the appellant had done so—and the appellant did not allege that his summons was accompanied by coercion diminishing his liberty—and his questioning about the findings of the inquiries resulted in the appellant, of his own accord, drawing up a written acknowledgment stating that he had committed the bribery offense forming the subject of the accusation and that the findings of the inquiries were correct. Accordingly, the police officer's—the officer involved in the incident—summoning of the appellant because he was accused of the crime of bringing narcotic substances in for prisoners amounted to no more than directing a request to him to attend to be questioned about the accusation surrounding him within the scope of the findings of the inquiries and the requirements of gathering evidence. It does not, in itself, constitute physical interference infringing or restricting his personal liberty, such as might then be confused with the arrest procedure prohibited to police officers outside the circumstances prescribed in Articles 53 to 57 of the Criminal Procedure and Trials Law. All these procedures undertaken by the detective officer—the first prosecution witness—therefore constitute the evidence-gathering, inquiry and investigation procedures referred to in the aforementioned Articles, which the law permits police officers to undertake when conducting inquiries into the perpetrators of crimes and those accused of them. They are valid procedures involving no nullity, and the court may rely on the indications and evidence resulting from them, including the statements of the officer who conducted them and the appellant's acknowledgment drawn up by him before the officer involved in the incident, provided that it is satisfied of its correctness and soundness. Since the challenged judgment concluded by rejecting the plea raised by the appellant in this regard, it correctly applied the law, and what the appellant raises in this regard is unsound.