Sharjah Court of Cassation Shuts the Door on Premature Criminal Appeals

6 min 37 sec October 19, 2026 (Edited)

Written by

Essam Al Tamimi

Chairman

e.tamimi@tamimi.com View LinkedIn Profile

Omar Khodeir

Legal Director

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Introduction

A criminal case in the UAE is commonly understood to pass through three stages: the Court of First Instance, the Court of Appeal, and the Court of Cassation. While this holds true in many cases, it is not invariably so; a given case may involve fewer or more stages. A case may end after a single stage. If, for example, the Court of First Instance issues a judgment and none of the eligible parties appeals within the statutory deadline, the proceedings end and the judgment becomes final at first instance.

Conversely, a criminal case may involve more than three stages. This is the case, for example, where the Criminal Court of First Instance issues a judgment in absentia (that is, in the absence of the accused). In such circumstances, the UAE Criminal Procedure Law gives the accused the right to file an opposition, not an appeal, and proceeding directly to the Criminal Court of Appeal is not the correct procedural route. The same principle applies at the appellate stage: where the Court of Appeal’s judgment is issued in absentia, a direct challenge before the Court of Cassation is premature. The Sharjah Court of Cassation has recently affirmed this principle.

In a judgment dated 28 September 2026 in Cassation Appeal No. 104 of 2026 (joined with Cassation Appeals Nos. 105 and 106 of 2026), the Sharjah Court of Cassation (Criminal Cassation Circuit) declared three cassation appeals inadmissible. The appeals had been filed before the appellants had exercised their right of opposition. Because the appeal judgment had in reality been issued in absentia, opposition, not cassation, was the correct first step.

The judgment is equally instructive on why the appeal judgment was treated as having been issued in absentia. Article 161 of the UAE Criminal Procedure Law requires the accused to attend criminal hearings in person in certain cases. If the accused fails to attend, the judgment is issued in absentia, and the attendance of the accused’s lawyers on his behalf does not change this.

In practice, an accused may attend only one or some hearings (for example, the first hearing) and be represented by counsel thereafter. Where the accused has attended at least one hearing in person and his lawyers attend the subsequent hearings, the court will ordinarily deem the judgment to have been issued in his presence rather than in absentia.

In this case, however, the Court of Appeal’s circuit had changed — that is, the panel had been reconstituted — and the parties were notified to attend an additional hearing before the new circuit. The accused did not attend in person.

The judgment is therefore an important reminder to defendants and their counsel that, in criminal proceedings, a lawyer’s attendance does not always count as the accused’s attendance, and that close attention must be paid to whether the court’s circuit has changed. Overlooking these critical procedural rules — namely, personal attendance and the correct statutory route for challenging a judgment — can result in the loss of valuable legal remedies, as well as wasted costs.

Case background

The Public Prosecution charged three defendants with offences committed in Sharjah before 21 March 2024. The first defendant was charged with forging an unofficial document (invoices) by placing on them a forged signature attributed to the victim, and with knowingly using the forged invoices by submitting them to a gold jewellery company.

The second and third defendants were charged with misappropriating movable property belonging to a gold jewellery company, which had been entrusted to them as agents, to the detriment of its rightful owners. The Prosecution sought penalties under Articles 251(2), 252(2), 254(2), 258(1), and 453(1) of Federal Decree-Law No. 31 of 2021 Promulgating the Crimes and Penalties Law.

On 18 November 2025, the Sharjah Court of First Instance (Misdemeanours Circuit), in a judgment deemed to have been issued in the presence of the defendants, sentenced each defendant to one year’s imprisonment and ordered their deportation after serving the sentence. The first defendant’s charges were treated as connected offences. The court also ordered the defendants to pay court fees and referred the civil claim to the competent civil court.

Court of Appeal

The defendants filed Appeals Nos. 4454, 4455, and 4456 of 2025. On 11 February 2026, the Sharjah Court of Appeal accepted the appeals in form but rejected them on the merits and upheld the first instance judgment except for the deportation order, which it cancelled. The defendants then filed appeals in cassation, and the Public Prosecution asked the Court to reject them.

For the purposes of this article, the procedural steps taken at the appeal stage are key. Before issuing its judgment, on 30 December 2025, the appellate court reopened the pleadings (allowing an additional hearing) and adjourned the case to 6 January 2026 so that the appellants could be notified.

By way of context, UAE courts have discretion to schedule additional hearings after the pleadings have closed and before judgment is issued. Ordinarily, once a court closes the pleadings and reserves the case for judgment on a fixed date, no further hearings are held and the parties cannot make further submissions. The court may, however, revisit that decision, hold an additional hearing, and then reserve the case for judgment on a new date.

Meanwhile, Administrative Decision No. 1 of 2026 reconstituted the appellate circuit, and the case was transferred to a different circuit, which was therefore to conduct the additional hearing. The new circuit ordered that the appellants be notified to attend a hearing on 14 January 2026, at which a differently constituted panel heard the case. The appellants did not attend in person, although their lawyers did. The court reserved the case for judgment on 11 February 2026, when the judgment under challenge was issued. The appellants did not attend that session in person either.

The Court of Cassation’s reasoning

Admissibility as a matter of public order

The Court of Cassation first addressed whether the appeals were admissible at all. It characterised this as a preliminary question of public order, which it must determine before considering the form or merits of an appeal and which it may raise of its own motion. It explained that judgments open to direct challenge are final judgments that conclusively resolve the entire dispute, leaving nothing further for the trial court to decide.

Personal attendance under Article 161

The Court relied on Article 161 of Federal Decree-Law No. 38 of 2022 Promulgating the Criminal Procedure Law. Under that article, an accused charged with a felony, or with a misdemeanour punishable by a penalty other than a fine, must attend in person; only in other misdemeanours and in contraventions may the accused appoint a representative to present their defence.

The offences in this case carried imprisonment, and the appellants attended neither the 14 January 2026 hearing nor the 11 February 2026 session in person, both of which took place before a newly constituted panel. The Court therefore held that the appeal judgment was in reality issued in absentia and was open to opposition.

Substance over labels

The Court made clear that this was so even though the appellate court had not described its judgment as one issued in absentia. Whether a judgment is issued in the presence of the accused or in absentia depends on what actually happened in the proceedings, not on the label the court attaches to it.

Exhausting ordinary remedies under Article 244(2)

The Court referred to Article 244(2) of the Criminal Procedure Law and to its own settled case law. Cassation lies only against final judgments of the Court of Appeal. As long as an ordinary avenue of challenge that could lead to the judgment being set aside or amended remains open, that avenue must be pursued first, because cassation is an extraordinary remedy.

Accordingly, where opposition is available, an in absentia judgment may be challenged in cassation only after the opposition has been determined or the time for filing it has expired.

Inadmissibility of the Cassation Appeal

As the appellants had not filed an opposition, the judgment had not become final. By bypassing opposition, they had skipped a procedural step and filed their cassation appeals prematurely. The Court therefore declared the appeals inadmissible.