What £500m worth of cocaine looks like
As two Turkish smugglers are jailed for a total of 42 years after biggest ever high-seas drugs bust, the photograph that shows...
TWO Turkish men convicted of smuggling half a billion pounds worth of cocaine on board a ship in the North Sea have been jailed for a total of 42 years.
Ship’s captain Mumin Sahin, 47, and first mate Emin Ozmen, 51, were caught with more than three tons of the Class A drug when their tugboat, the MV Hamal, was boarded around 100 miles off the coast of Aberdeen.
The seizure in 2015 following a tip-off by French authorities is said to be the biggest single cocaine haul ever recovered at sea in Europe.
The huge stash of drugs was found hidden inside a specially-adapted secret hold in the Tanzanian-registered vessel when it was stopped by the Royal Navy frigate HMS Somerset and Border Force cutter HMC Valiant.
Sahin was sentenced to 22 years and Ozmen to 20 years at the High Court in Glasgow.
Judge Lord Kinclaven told the men the quantity of drugs was ‘not only significant but massive’ and drugs trafficking had a ‘devastating impact’ on people and communities.
He said: ‘You were involved in a most serious operation of commercial scale involving the transportation of cocaine by ship, in an operation which crossed international and indeed intercontinental boundaries.’
He told Sahin he was ‘not at the top of the drugs tree’ but had played an important role in the offence, while Ozmen’s role was ‘to some extent a lesser one’.
Officers boarded the Hamal following a tip-off from the DNRED French customs body. Once the tug was docked in Aberdeen, they drilled through a steel plate into a secret compartment to find 129 bales of cocaine weighing 3.5 tons.
The entry to the space was found under a wardrobe in one of the crew’s quarters, with the opening cemented over.
National Crime Agency officer Alistair Gow told the men’s trial that the haul was so big it took two days to remove and involved a specialist ‘deep rummage’ team, plus a crane on Aberdeen Harbour quayside to remove the bales from the ship. Under maximum security, the entire haul was later taken to Glasgow for the jury to view at the trial.
Investigators believe the cocaine would be ‘cut’ three times before being sold, which meant there was the potential to create almost ten tons of adulterated street-levelpurity cocaine, valued at around £512million. Police drugs expert Jurgen Wahla told the court: ‘It is a massive importation – unprecedented… in my experience.’
After a 12-week trial, Sahin and Ozmen were found guilty of carrying and concealing cocaine on the ship between February 20 and April 23 last year, and of being concerned in the supply of cocaine between April 21 and April 23 last year.
The men, both first offenders who have worked in the shipping industry since leaving school, maintain their innocence but accept the jury’s verdict. Charges against four other men were not proven.
Sahin’s lawyer, Jonathan Crowe, said the married father of two was a ‘glorified mule’, describing him as ‘someone who was involved in the transportation of the drugs, someone who was able to captain a boat. In regard to the drugs hierarchy, Mr Sahin is certainly not at the top of the drugs tree.’
Mr Crowe said Sahin was ‘devastated’ about missing out on milestones for his daughter, nine, and son, 13, and ‘just wants to go home to Turkey’. Both men have not seen their families since being taken into custody in April last year.
Ozmen’s lawyer, Di Moore, said he was ‘desperate’ to see his family.
On the success of the operation, Border Force regional director Tony McMullin said: ‘This was one of the most intricate concealments we’ve ever encountered but it was no match for our expert Border Force search teams.’