Leeds Bradford drug smuggler jailed
27.01.09
A teenage drugs smuggler who flew into Leeds Bradford Airport with £400,000 of heroin stashed in suitcases has been jailed for seven years, the Yorkshire Evening Post reports. Customs officers had discovered 8 kilos of the drug at around 50 percent purity concealed behind the lining of the two professionally adapted cases, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Belgian national Eliezer Tshibamba Katuku Nono, 19, told police he was a student who had travelled to Leeds from Brussels on the flight last September and planned to stay a fortnight to visit an uncle in Leeds.
The court heard Nono told police he had no idea heroin was in the suitcases. Nono, who sat with a French interpreter in the dock, later said that was a lie. Prosecutor, Danielle Graham, said he told police his aunt and uncle promised to pay him €5,500 for smuggling drugs into the UK.
He admitted bringing in the drugs in from Turkey via Paris and Brussels and was intending to catch a train to London to hand over the cases to his uncle. Richard Reed, for Nono, said he was at the ‘bottom of the chain’ in the drug smuggling world and did not lead a lavish lifestyle. Mr Reed said his client was an easy target for those higher up the chain.
Nono had pleaded guilty to importation of heroin. Jailing him for seven years, Judge James Spencer QC, told him: ‘If you are deported you will serve that sentence in Belgium.’
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