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Dubai Police Use Futuristic Technology To Read Murder Suspect’s Mind

Published

6 years ago

February 5, 2021

dubai police use futuristic technology to read murder suspect's mind

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A recently solved murder case in Dubai shows that science fiction movies have become a reality. Instead of traditional methods, the Dubai Police solved the case using a new technology developed by Brainwave Science, Inc, which makes it possible to literary read the minds of crime suspects.

This technology is called iCognative, but those familiar with it often call it “memory print” or “brain fingerprinting.” The science behind it is fairly easy to understand. When the human brain recognizes a known object, image, or piece of information, it involuntarily emits the so-called P300 wave.

The P300 wave is an event-related brain potential that can be measured using electroencephalography (EEG), and that’s exactly what iCognative does.

“We used the technology in a murder at a warehouse. Experts showed [the workers] pictures related to the crime, which only the person who committed it would know,” said Lt Colonel Mohammad Al Hammadi, Director of Criminology for Dubai Police. “After the session, the [brain mapping] device helped identify the main suspect who then admitted to having committed the murder.”

Lt Colonel Mohammad Al Hammadi has confirmed that the Dubai Police will continue using iCognative when solving future crimes. Other law enforcement agencies around the globe are also trialing the technology, while others, such as India’s police force, have been using it for years.

Also Read: Hyperloop Video Provides A Peek At The Future Of Transportation

The technique for the detection of concealed information with event-related brain potentials was pioneered by American neuroscientist Lawrence A. Farwell, who described its potential for lie detection in his 2012 research paper.

If you would like to see a real convicted murderer, Steven Avery, be brain fingerprinted by Lawrence A. Farwell, you can watch the second season of Netflix’s “Making of a Murderer“. If this isn’t good use of science fiction, then I don’t know what is.

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Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

1 week ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

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The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.