The United Arab Emirates has sentenced an Israeli woman convicted of drug charges to life in prison, her lawyer said, AP reports.

At first, the court sentenced her to death, but overturned it last week. Israel says it is closely following the case in the UAE, which normalized relations with Israel in 2020 in the first of the so-called Abraham Accords brokered by the Donald Trump administration.

Fida Kiwan, a 43-year-old resident of the Israeli city of Haifa, was arrested in March 2021. Authorities say marijuana, cocaine and MDMA pills were found in the apartment where she was staying and she was convicted on charges of intent to sell drugs. She denied the accusations.

Her lawyer, Mordechai Tzivin, said she was sentenced to life in prison. He said the law enforcement system in the UAE is very precise and there is precedent for amnesty in cases of harsh sentences.

Israel's Foreign Ministry welcomed the decision to abolish the death penalty last week, saying it was satisfied that efforts through legal and other channels have resulted in the abolition of the death penalty.

The UAE has some of the strictest drug laws in the world. While UAE law allows for the death penalty in certain cases, capital punishment is rarely applied.