Seven years for teenage drug smuggler
27.01.09
A teenage drugs smuggler who flew into Leeds Bradford Airport with £400,000 worth of heroin has been jailed for seven years, the Yorkshire Evening Post reports. Customs officers discovered 8 kgs of the drug at around 50% 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 that he told police he had no idea heroin was in the suitcases. However, he later said that was a lie. Prosecutor, Danielle Graham, said Nono told police his aunt and uncle promised to pay him €5500 for smuggling drugs into the UK.
He admitted bringing in the drugs in from Turkey via Paris and Brussels and said that he 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’ and was an easy target for those higher up.
Nono had pleaded guilty to the importation of heroin. Jailing him for seven years, Judge James Spencer QC, said: ‘If you are deported you will serve that sentence in Belgium.’
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