Brit soldier killed in Iraq is back home
MISSILE STRIKE Brodie
THE body of a British soldier killed in Iraq last week has been repatriated.
Lance Corporal Brodie Gillon, a reservist with the Scottish and North Irish Yeomanry, died in a missile attack on Camp Taji, north of Baghdad.
She had been volunteering as part of the Irish Guards Battle Group in its deployment to the country.
Brodie, from Ayr, Scotland, joined in 2015 as a combat medical technician before qualifying as a Class 1 combat medical technician in 2018.
The body of the 26-yearold, a sports physio, was repatriated to RAF Brize Norton yesterday.
Her family said in a statement: “Our hearts are irreparably broken at the loss of our beautiful, bright and fun-loving Brodie.”
A SUBURBAN housewife with a sordid double life has been jailed for her role in a plot to smuggle £1million of crystal meth into the UK.
Paola Morrish, 42, who worked as an escort, plotted to sneak the killer drug into Britain in bags of coffee and plastic Mexican wrestler toys.
The mum of one from posh Malmesbury, Wiltshire, was arrested after observant Border Force officers spotted a suspicious package at Stansted Airport in Essex last January and tracked it to an address linked to her.
Last month her husband David Morrish, 48, admitted a charge of assisting an offender at Swindon crown court in relation to the case.
He had disposed of a package that had been received by Paola in February.
It is believed the drugs could be linked
TRAGIC Ava-May Littleboy
With husband David to Mexican crime cartels operating across South America, although it is unknown whether they were intended for British streets or those in Europe.
The court heard Paola Morrish told detectives that she had made contacts in the drugdealing world during her time working as an escort.
A London-based gang member believed to be the intended recipient of the drugs, Paolo Matos, 35, fled from his flat in Battersea, South West London, to Mexico last year.
He is wanted by both the UK and Italian authorities.
Judge Jason Taylor said to Mrs Morrish yesterday at Swindon crown court: “You were the glue that bound the countries together. You had contact with several people in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia as well as others.
“You even asked two of those contacts whether they had ever thought about ‘setting up something serious in Europe’.
“You were an integral part in this chain of supply.
“You aspired and dreamt of ‘large-scale imports and doing great things’.
The judge said Mrs Morrish was “quick-witted, canny and manipulative”.
He added: “If this operation hadn’t been caught in its infancy, that’s the direction it was headed. You were a, if not the, major driving force.” Although acknowledging that she had
JUDGE JASON TAYLOR SENTENCING ESCORT GIRL not made the money she had expected to, he said: “Foolish, naive and hapless criminals can still be highly culpable.”
Paola Morrish was jailed for six years and four months while her husband, a self-employed gardener and removal man, received a nine-month sentence, suspended for 18 months, and was ordered to carry out unpaid work.
Det Insp Adrian Hawkins, of the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit, said: “Mrs Morrish was clearly heavily involved in a potentially lucrative plot to smuggle large amounts of the class-A drug into the UK on behalf of a Mexican organised crime group.
“Their network was disrupted and the sentences handed down today show that playing any part in such a plot has serious consequences.”
You dreamt of ‘largescale imports and doing great things’