Man once accused of racist murder admits drug plot
A MAN who was suspected in the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence has admitted being a kingpin in a £4m drugs plot after being on the run.
Jamie Acourt, 42, from Eltham, south-east London, pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court yesterday over the two-year conspiracy to sell cannabis resin.
His 43-year-old brother Neil Acourt has already been jailed for more than six years over the hashish scheme.
But Jamie had spent more than two years on the run until his arrest in May, during which he lived in Spain under the alias Simon Alfonzo.
Prosecutors believe both were ringleaders and that they enlisted family members to the scheme that saw drugs transported between London and South Shields, Tyne and Wear.
Both Acourts were arrested after the racist stabbing of the black 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence by a gang of white men in Eltham in 1993, but have always denied involvement.
Jurors were earlier told of his historic allegation and warned they should consider him solely on the trial’s evidence.
Jamie Acourt, appearing in court wearing a beard, previously denied the conspiracy to supply a Class B drug between January 2014 and February 2016, but changed his plea following the end of the prosecution’s case opening.
The basis of his plea was that it was agreed with the prosecution he was involved in the conspiracy to supply between January 1, 2014 and May 2, 2015 only. Acourt fled the country after police raided a home he lived in with his partner and their two children in Bexley, south-east London, in February 2016. He was arrested by armed officers as he left a gym in Barcelona on May 4, 2018 and extradited back to Britain.
Jailing him, judge Recorder Paul Clements suggested one of Neil Acourt’s problems was that he had “heard too much negativity about you and begun to believe the negative publicity about you”.
The plot, he added, would “have kept the people of the Newcastle area in spliffs for many a long day”.