Over two weeks in the summer of 2000, from June 21 to July 4, a passenger hired taxis in the suburbs of Abu Dhabi and Al Ain, offered each driver a soft drink, and robbed him when he collapsed. The drink had been laced with a strong agricultural pesticide, and according to the interior ministry it stopped the heart within about six minutes. Five drivers died. Three more survived, and two of them later identified the man who had given them the drink. All eight were Pakistani, as was the man arrested for it, Junaid Nawaz Lal Nawaz.
The interior ministry announced his arrest in July 2000, a few days after the last poisoning, and said he had confessed to poisoning the drivers to steal their money; a later court report gives the arrest as July 2001, a date that falls after his sentencing and is probably an error. He admitted to all eight. He was jobless, and had run away from the employer who sponsored his visa.
In his first hearing he testified that he had meant to kill the drivers and rob them. The Al Ain Court of First Instance found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to death on May 29, 2001, and also convicted him of adultery and of absconding from his employer. He appealed that August, now telling the court he had never intended to kill anyone and had only wanted to make the drivers fall unconscious so that he could rob them. The federal public prosecutor lodged a counter-appeal the same day, pressing for the death sentence.
The Federal High Court rejected his appeal, confirmed the sentence and referred it to the Presidential Court for approval, as reported on March 1, 2004. According to the ruling, the nature of the crime did not allow him to escape the penalty by paying blood money to the victims' families. Under the procedure then in force, the sentence could be carried out only once the president approved it. No report of his execution, or of any change to the sentence, has been found.