LADS’ HOLIDAY ENDS IN JAIL
IN 2016, Daley Thompson travelled to Greece with his friends for a lads’ holiday.
However, the Cardiff 27-year-old’s holiday lasted longer than planned as he ended up spending a year behind bars.
He was accused of possessing, dealing and smuggling cocaine.
His story is told as part of new four-part 5Star series Young, Dumb, and Banged Up in the Sun, which features Britons imprisoned abroad while on holiday or living as expats.
He is one of three young British tourists featured in the first episode.
“It was a spontaneous holiday, we had a ball, we went out partying,” Thompson recalled.
Early into the trip the friends met a group of English men who had cocaine and offered to introduce them to their dealer, an “Albanian man down the strip”.
Thompson and his friends met the drug dealers and bought fourand-a-half ounces of cocaine.
“If you bought it in small amounts it was extortionate so we bought a bigger amount”, he says.
“Our intention wasn’t to sell it, but we started to sell it.”
The street value of cocaine in Malia is £80 per gram. Thompson and his friends were making double their money.
“All the workers would rather buy from us rather than go to the Albanian guys, we were making a good bit of money” he says.
“People kept telling us that they knew what we were doing, we was definitely reckless. We were sniffing it in plain view of everyone. We wasn’t keeping it under wraps, we were just partying and oblivious to it all.
“We was just having a laugh, five days of partying, until the fifth day, everything went wrong.”
“We had a party back at ours, then we fell asleep. All I heard was ‘Policia, policia.’ “They opened the fridge and when I saw the package I was just dead, I couldn’t believe it.
“I knew I was facing jail but I didn’t know how long, every time you wake up and go to bed you think about it. Everyone told me in jail that I was looking at life.”
Thompson was arrested with over £4,000 worth of cocaine. The group were sent to the island’s Neapolis jail, where they found themselves caught in a brutal gang war between Greek and Albanian inmates.
Then, after a fight with an inmate, Thompson was transferred to the notorious Alikaransoss prison.
He said: “I met some really dangerous people, there were Mexican drug cartels, Pakistani bosses who are shipping heroin around the world, Chinese Mafia who are chopping people’s arms and heads off.”
Thompson and his friends admitted possession but denied supplying and smuggling. The minimum sentence for smuggling is 15 years.
After eight months in prison, Thompson was brought before three judges who found him guilty of possession and selling the cocaine but not guilty of smuggling. The three men were each sentenced to four years in prison with a three-year suspended sentence. They were released after one year. The 27-year-old said that he has lost everything.
“I missed my son’s birthday, I should have taken him to Disneyland but obviously everything went wrong, I lost my girlfriend, I lost everything.
“I know I was having fun for the five days but look where I am now. I had to eat food with rats running around, it was disgusting, it was a hell hole.”
Young, Dumb and Banged Up in the Sun is on tonight at 9pm on 5STAR