Drug smuggler jailed for 7 years
22.10.08
A South American who swallowed over a kilo of cocaine worth over £200,000 to smuggle it into Northern Ireland was jailed for seven years yesterday.
Email Ewald Banai, a 57-year-old Surinamese national resident in Holland, was arrested by Revenue and Customs officers when he arrived at Belfast International Airport on a flight from Amsterdam in October last year.
During routine questioning, officers became suspicious and Mr Banai was arrested and taken to a nearby hospital for X-ray examination. One hundred small packages were recovered and on subsequent testing proved to contain a total of 1.07 kilos of cocaine with a street value of £207,000.
Sentencing him at Antrim Crown Court, Judge Grant described Banai as ‘a habitual re-offender’. He had previous involvement in Holland for drugs offences relating to cocaine and heroin. The judge said he wanted to ‘stamp out the illegal importation of drugs into Northern Ireland’.
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