Scottish aristocrat is fall guy for drug lords
US drug enforcement officials tell Kenya to release files proving...
AMERICAN agents investigating an international cocaine-smuggling operation for which Scottish aristocrat Jack Marrian is standing trial in Kenya have called on the authorities to hand over documents believed to prove his innocence.
Mr Marrian faces up to 30 years in an African jail if found guilty after a criminal gang hid almost 100kg (220 lb) of drugs in a shipment of sugar belonging to his company without his knowledge, according to his lawyer.
The cocaine, worth £4.5million, was stashed in a shipping container in Brazil before being loaded on to the MSC Positano. The vessel later docked in Valencia, Spain, before going on to Africa with the drugs still on board.
The Spanish authorities alerted a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) team in Nairobi, saying that the criminals had originally intended to offload the cocaine in Valencia, and that ‘the recipient of the container in Mombasa would have no knowledge that it was being used to transport drugs’ and that there was no connection to Kenya.
The drugs, hidden in Lacoste sportswear packaging, were found by police when the Positano docked in Mombasa on July 27. The DEA in Nairobi passed a detailed tip-off to Kenyan police in which the US agents made clear their belief there was no involvement by Jack Marrian and trading company Mshale Commodities, or any Kenyan connection.
Incensed that this vital information is being withheld from the defence in the trial of Marlborougheducated Mr Marrian – the son of renowned painter David Marrian and Lady Emma Campbell, daughter of the sixth Earl of Cawdor – the DEA team is now seeking to hand two crucial memos directly to Marrian’s defence team and to petition the Kenyan director of public prosecutions.
A DEA spokesman in Washington told The Mail on Sunday: ‘We strongly believe that documents drawn up by our investigator in Nairobi should urgently be made available to Jack Marrian and his defence. Spanish police had informed our investigator that there was no Kenyan connection to the shipment of cocaine which arrived in Mombasa docks on July 27. A second memo containing follow-up reports from Brazilian and Spanish police was also passed on. We expected the prosecution at Jack Marrian’s trial to release these two documents to the defence but that has not happened.’
Once the drugs arrived in Mombasa, the DEA’s intention was to await the arrival of Spanish drugsyndicate members hoping to recover their goods and then swoop.
Instead, leaks to the Kenyan media led to pressure to make arrests, and Mr Marrian was taken into custody.
After being charged with clearing agent Roy Mwanthi, Marrian spent two weeks in prison before he was allowed out on £530,000 bail.
Two weeks ago Mr Marrian’s lawyer, Andrew Wandabwa, asked a magistrate to order the prosecution to hand over relevant documents, yet, incredibly, the vital memos from the DEA were deemed ‘not relevant to the prosecution’s case’. Last night, Mr Marrian – whose ancestral home, Cawdor Castle near Nairn, is the setting for Shakespeare’s Macbeth – welcomed the intervention.
He said: ‘A lot of evil has been done by some bad people in connection with this incident. When good people start to do the right thing, this nightmare will come to an end. I am pleased that finally some pressure has been brought to bear on those good people who have sat on the sidelines for so long.’
The trial in Nairobi is set to resume next month.