Aristocrat ‘has been made fall guy’ in £2m drug smuggling case
A SCOTTISH aristocrat’s son accused of smuggling £2.2million of cocaine into Kenya has been made the ‘fall guy’ to cover up police blunders, it was claimed yesterday.
Jack Marrian, 31, grandson of the sixth Earl Cawdor, was arrested last month after 220lb of cocaine was found in bags of sugar being shipped from Brazil to Uganda via the Kenyan port of Mombasa.
The Marlborough Collegeeducated sugar trader has been held in custody for weeks after Kenya’s Director of Public Prosecutions made an intervention in the case – trying to get a magistrate’s decision to bail him overturned in an eleventh-hour appeal to the High Court.
Yesterday, as a judge ruled there were no ‘compelling reasons’ to deny Mr Marrian bail, there were questions about the handling of the case and claims that ‘unusual pressure’ was being placed on prosecutors and police.
It has also been suggested that Kenyan police have failed to question the shipping company that brought in the container of sugar hiding the drugs.
According to Mr Marrian, an independent agent inspected and sealed the 22 containers before they left South America, and he had no contact with or control over four containers which arrived in Kenya a week early with the cocaine hidden inside them.
Yet Kenyan Police have not pursued those who would have had access to the container on the ship, his lawyers claim.
Andrew Wandabwa, defending, said: ‘They are really pushing this case. For whatever reason, there’s unusual pressure on the DPP. There’s some frenzy in the way they’re going about it.’
He added: ‘The impression I have is that they are happy to have a fall guy who they will go after. We are doing our own investral tigations to find out what really happened here.’
Yesterday Mr Marrian, the son of Lady Emma Campbell, was granted bail as Judge Luka Kimaru ruled that there was ‘no evidence’ that he would leave the country, given his extensive ties to Kenya.
Earlier this week he was granted bail at a magistrates court hearing in Kenya on a surety of 70million Kenyan Shillings (£530,000).
But the prosecutor appealed to the High Court, saying Mr Marrian was a flight risk as he faces a life sentence if convicted.
The defendant – whose ances- home is Cawdor Castle in Nairn, the setting for Shakespeare’s play Macbeth – has lived in Kenya since the age of four.
He was raised in an affluent part of Nairobi and educated at a prestigious international prep school with three-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome, before going on to Marlborough College, where the Duchess of Cambridge was a pupil, and later the University of Bristol.
For the past eight years he has worked in Africa running a string of sugar and commodity companies. He is managing director of Mshale Commodities.
Yesterday Lady Emma Campbell insisted her son was innocent and said the family were relieved he had been granted bail. ‘As a family we are hugely relieved and very happy that the court saw fit to do this for Jack,’ she said.
‘We hope that the rest of the investigation carries on without interruption and we can get a final conclusion and get Jack exonerated.’
Asked about her son’s condition in police custody, she said: ‘He is good, it’s been a big strain but he has handled it very well, been very courageous and calm. It helps that he’s innocent.’
Mr Marrian is expected to spend the weekend in custody while arrangements for his release are finalised on Monday.
His trial and that of a Kenyan man, Roy Francis Mwanthi, who faces the same charges, has been scheduled for October.
‘Courageous and calm’