British drug couriers posing as tourists
Hundreds, or even thousands, of British nationals, posing as genuine tourists, are staging organised drugs runs from Jamaica to the UK, Jamaican police and British Customs officers say. Sometimes the traffickers travel with young children to reduce the risk of being searched or even to conceal the drugs.
“The vast majority of UK nationals who are caught with drugs either in Jamaica or in the UK come here specifically to take back drugs,” says Superintendent Gladstone Wright, deputy head of the Jamaican narcotics police.
Around 650 British nationals have been arrested carrying drugs at Jamaican airports in the last four years and there are now 10 times more UK nationals in Jamaican prisons than any other foreign nationality. UK customs do not keep figures for the numbers of British nationals they arrest coming from Jamaica but told the Sunday Observer that the number was “about the same” as in Jamaica.
However, Superintendent Wright estimates that only a minority of drug couriers are arrested, suggesting the number of smugglers is much higher.
“Most drug smugglers get through,” he says. “We do not have the resources to search every passenger or no flight would ever take off. We can only conduct random checks.”
“There is no way that we detect every smuggler,” agrees Nadine Smith of UK Customs and Excise, adding that customs officers were well aware of the problem of British nationals smuggling drugs from Jamaica.
“Some are black British people who have family in Jamaica,” says Smith. “Some have contacts in Jamaica but others are white British people with no connections at all.”
Inquiries by the Sunday Observer have established that although all but three of the 19 British nationals arrested last month carrying over £6 million worth of marijuana were black, few had close family ties in Jamaica.
Almost all the 19 arrested or convicted for carrying almost a tonne of marijuana in their suitcases maintain they are innocent – saying their luggage had been tampered with and they had no idea the drugs were there.
“We were set up,” says Natasha Campbell, 26, one of two white Britons convicted. “This is a nightmare for us. We came on holiday and now we’re being kept in terrible conditions living on bread and water, surviving in dirty, crowded cells. We are innocent.”
According to Campbell, she was advised by her lawyer to plead guilty “because the drugs were in my suitcase, even though I didn’t know they were there”.
“We were told we would have to stay in custody until next year before our trial if we pleaded not guilty,” she says.
It is a fact that trials can take a long time in the Jamaican court system and the British High Commission confirmed that two British women, arrested last Christmas, were still waiting for a trial.
However, none of last month’s group – several of whom are students or unemployed – have been able to explain why they received a mysterious free holiday to the luxury Sunset Beach Hotel and Spa in Montego Bay or why all of them were carrying identical designer luggage on to the flight.
The Jamaican police suspect all 19 are part of a single smuggling ring.
“This was a highly organised operation both in the UK and here,” says Inspector Rashford Kerr, head of Area One narcotics division which covers St James, Westmoreland, Trelawny and Hanover. “Whoever is behind this recruited 19 people, paid for 19 holidays and bought a huge amount of ganja.”
Other guests at the hotel, who were friendly with the 19 but not involved in the drugs bust themselves, believe the majority are guilty and came to Jamaica to smuggle drugs.
“It was obvious that several of those people had come here on a drugs run,” says Sally Anne Forbes, 28. “There was a bunch of guys who came together from West London and I knew they were up to something from the start, continues Forbes. They caused a lot of trouble in the hotel.”
The manager of the hotel, Simon Azan, confirms this saying several of the 19 later arrested were almost kicked out for being violent and disruptive.
“And that young couple, Kelly Anne Page and Dean Shaw,” Forbes continues – referring to two of the three white Britons arrested in the drugs bust – “They might look innocent but I saw them doing things in the hotel.” (She then made allegations which are not printable for legal reasons.)
“I’m not sure about Natasha though,” says Forbes with a puzzled look. “She said she had a BMW and a really nice house and designer clothes, so why would she do it?”
Eric Wright, 42, a successful filmmaker and actor in the UK, who was about to open an office in New York, was another who did not fit the profile of a “typical” drug smuggler.
Indeed, many of the Britons convicted appeared to have steady jobs – although several admitted to previous criminal convictions in court.
Most of those arrested or convicted were single parents or couples and asked the court to take this into account. However, the judge and British diplomats were not sympathetic to their pleas.
“It is totally irresponsible for people to knowingly smuggle drugs when they are travelling with children,” says Mags Fenner-White, spokeswoman of the British High Commission. “They are being extremely naïve.”
Smith of UK Customs and Excise went further. “Sometimes people travel with children because they think they look less suspicious and we won’t stop them,” she says. “Sometimes they actually use the children to hide the drugs. We’ve found cocaine in children’s nappies, trousers, pockets, coats – they will try anything.”
Superintendent Wright agrees.
“We’ve had people passing through the airport looking like absolute angels and then we find that their children are stuffed with drugs – and some of these have definitely been British nationals,” he says.
Many have questioned why the 19 Britons – four of whom are pleading not guilty – took such an apparently foolish risk as to travel on one flight with identical luggage. However, several of those convicted have told police they believed they were “safe” as police and customs officers in the UK and Jamaica had accepted massive bribes to let the shipment through.
“They said they believed that customs officers at Gatwick Airport had accepted a bribe of at least £100,000 (almost J$8 million),” a police source told the Sunday Observer. “So Gatwick Airport would be like a ghost town” when the shipment came through.
“We completely and utterly deny that,” said Shona Lowe, spokeswoman at Gatwick Customs.
While refusing to comment on the situation at Gatwick, Wright says that people are often bribed in Jamaica to allow drugs through.
“That has happened many times before,” says the policeman. “Whenever a large quantity of drugs goes through the airport there has to be collusion from people and agencies on the inside.”
Wright believes that, in this instance, several people had been paid to allow the shipment through Montego Bay.
“There is great collusion in Montego Bay. It has a problem that Kingston doesn’t have,” he says. “For example, last year a plane took off for the UK from Montego Bay with 600 kg of cocaine inside the wings. You can’t do that without help.”
There are also strong suggestions that undercover British police and customs officers at Montego Bay knew exactly when the drugs were coming and which suitcases they were in.
“It was British men who pulled aside all the people arrested with the drugs,” claims one airport worker who did not wish to be named. “They pointed out the cases and said to the baggage handlers, ‘Open those cases’. The baggage handlers said, ‘But those cases have already been searched, they have security tape on them’. And the British said, ‘We don’t care ,open them again’. Then they found the drugs.”
This scenario was confirmed by several of those arrested in the drugs bust who told police they now believed they had been set up in a ‘sting’ operation by British Customs, who refused to confirm or deny this.
There has been a massive investment by UK Customs to combat drug smuggling from Jamaica, including the establishment of a J$150-million (£2-million) task force just to look at luggage entering the UK on flights from Jamaica.
In addition, British customs officials are now interrogating, at the gates and inside departure lounges, airline passengers travelling to Jamaica, even those who, in the past, may not have fit the profile of drug couriers.
The Observer’s editor-in-chief, Paget deFreitas, on his return from continental Europe to Jamaica two weeks ago, was among a number of passengers questioned and had their documents scrutinised by customs officers at Heathrow.
Specifically the customs officials wanted to know why he had been to Paris and Brussels. They also asked the non-Jamaican passengers how they planned to finance their stay in the island, whether they had international or Jamaican bank accounts, whether they would be using credit cards or cheques, and how long they intended to stay in Jamaica.
But police here stress that despite these measures and greatly increased co-operation between Jamaican and UK authorities, the majority of drugs smuggled through Jamaica are still destined for the UK.
“It’s much less risky to smuggle drugs to the United States,” says Wright. “But England is still the preferred destination as the price of both marijuana and cocaine is much higher, so the returns for the drug contractors are greater.”
He says that the downgrading of marijuana from a Class B to a Class C drug in the United Kingdom might encourage people to smuggle marijuana.
“In fact, it’s likely there will be an increase,” says Wright.
“The spotlight has really been put back on marijuana with this latest drugs bust,” agrees the high commission’s Fenner-White.
Officials from the British Home Office and Department of Health say that, even in the UK, there is a widespread misunderstanding among young people and many adults about what has happened with the reclassification of the drug. There is an assumption that it has been legalised.
Fenner-White says she accepts that the reclassification of the drug may have misled some Jamaicans into thinking it is now legal in the UK.
“The reclassification was given a lot of coverage here,” she says. “It was front page news. That may have confused some people. It is not legal in the UK. It has not been decriminalised.”