4 years for Edinburgh Airport drugs mule
18.04.08
A South African drug courier caught with more than £26,000 worth of cannabis gift-wrapped in his bag at Edinburgh Airport was jailed for four years yesterday.
Cornelius Roets, 44, was stopped by customs officers at the airport after arriving on a flight from Amsterdam in February, having originally travelled from Johannesburg. He was flagged up on the immigration system when he arrived in Scotland because he had a previous conviction for drug smuggling. When customs officers asked if he had packed his bag himself he told them it was packed by a man called Frank in South Africa who paid him £1200 to transport it to Scotland.
The officers opened his case and found two boxes wrapped in happy birthday paper containing 14.7 kilograms of cannabis plant stems and leaves. Mr Roets said he did not know what was in the bag but admitted suspecting it was drugs. He claimed he knew it was an offence to bring cocaine into the UK but did not know cannabis was illegal.
Mr Roets entered a guilty plea earlier this month at Edinburgh Sheriff Court to the fraudulent evasion of a prohibition on the importation of cannabis under the Misuse of Drugs Act on February 24 this year. Sheriff Gordon Liddle said the sentence would have been six years had he not pled guilty at the earliest opportunity.
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