Newlywed jailed for Newcastle Airport drug smuggling
11.01.09
A newlywed man will spend the first years of married life behind bars after being caught attempting to smuggle cocaine with a street value of more than £400,000 through Newcastle Airport, the Journal reports. Lawrence Izundu was intercepted by officers from the UK Border Agency when he arrived at the terminal from Cameroon via Paris on September 18 last year. He was stopped in the ‘nothing to declare’ channel where officers discovered 4.49 kilos of cocaine concealed in the lining of a suitcase he was carrying.
When arrested and quizzed by customs officers, he claimed he had innocently agreed while on his honeymoon in Cameroon to carry the case for a stranger in exchange for an air ticket. But he later admitted he had known the case contained drugs and had agreed to smuggle them into the UK to pay of large debts.
On Friday at Newcastle Crown Court, Nigerian-born Izundu, of Villas Road, London, was jailed for eight years after admitting importing a controlled Class A drug. Passing sentence, Judge Beatrice Bolton said she was sentencing the 35-year-old on the basis he had been acting as a mule in bringing the drugs into the country and gave him full credit for his guilty plea. But she told him: ‘Without people like you willing to carry large amounts of drugs into the country in suitcases, the drugs trade would not be nearly so successful as it is.’
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