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BRITISH aristocrat Jack Marrian was ‘overwhelmed’ last night after finally being acquitted of drugsmuggling charges which could have seen him jailed for life.
Mr Marrian, 33, had been accused of bringing cocaine worth £ 4.5million into the docks of Mombasa, Kenya, hidden in a consignment of brown sugar he ordered from Brazil in 2016.
But after a three-year ordeal, it took just 15 minutes for Kenyan High Court judge Luka Kimaru to announce that Mr Marrian had no case to answer.
The grandson of the late Earl of Cawdor described his relief after ‘so many false hopes and so much desperation’.
‘It’s incredible news, I’m totally overwhelmed,’ said Mr Marrian, whose family seat is Cawdor Castle in the Scottish Highlands. ‘The relief is flooding in... I need to take it all in, and celebrate.’
He added that he was ‘hugely relieved that after so long the prosecution has had the courage to do the right thing’. Mr Marrian worked for three years in London for sugar traders ED&F Man. For the past seven years he has run the firm’s subsidiary Mshala Commodities, living in Kenya near to his parents and four siblings.
As CEO of Mshale Commodities, his name had been on a cargo receipt for 22 shipping containers which left Brazil in June 2016. Four of the containers were separated during a stopover in Valencia and loaded on to a ship sailing to Mombasa. Agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) who had been monitoring activity by a Brazilian drugs gang tipped off port police that plastic bags of cocaine were hid- among the sugar. The value of the drugs was initially reported as being £2million, but was later raised to £4.5million.
Mr Marrian was arrested and spent two weeks on remand, sharing a cell with alleged murderers and rapists, while a £500,000 bail bond was raised.
He faced a possible prison sentence of 30 years if convicted.
But the DEA sent a letter to Nairobi police absolving Mr Marrian. The document read: ‘It is clear from the intelligence that the load was placed inside the container unbeknownst of the owner of the sugar. This is a common occurrence used by drug traffickers. The DEA would like to stress that... the company owning the consignment had no knowledge that the cocaine was secreted inside their shipment of sugar.’
Three weeks ago the Kenyan Director of Public Prosecutions authorised Nairobi magistrate Derrick Kuto to accept there was no case for Mr Marrian to answer. But magistrates initially refused to drop the case. His mother Lady Emma Campbell, his father artist David Marden rian, and his brothers and girlfriend Emanuela comforted him outside the courtroom, devastated at the setback.
However, yesterday Mr Marrian’s lawyer Andrew Wandabwa said: ‘The High Court in Nairobi said the magistrate was in error when he disputed the DPP’s power to drop this case, and he applauded the DPP for finding Jack Marrian innocent. I’m glad for him that this nightmare is over.’ Last night Mr Marrian was with friends on a ski trip in the French Alps.
‘This nightmare is over’
Aristocrat’s son arrested in Kenya over £2million cocaine trafficking From the Mail, August 5, 2016