Pubdate: Thu, 07 Apr 2005
Source: Daily Telegraph (UK)
Copyright: 2005 Telegraph Group Limited
Contact:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/114
Author: Richard Savill
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

VETERANS' MEMORIAL TRIP WAS A COVER FOR DRUG DEAL

Elderly war veterans visited memorials in France to pay respects to
fallen comrades unaware that their coach trip was being used as a
cover for a UKP12.5 million cocaine smuggling operation.

Alan Turner, 53, a coach driver, who was jailed for 12 years at the
Old Bailey yesterday, used the Second World War soldiers to give the
scheme a respectable front.

The veterans did not realise that three holdalls in the luggage
section of their 49-seater coach contained 75 one-kilo packages of
cocaine.

Turner, of Charlton in south-east London, was a veteran, with a "good
military record, serving twice in Northern Ireland in very difficult
times," his counsel, Simon Connolly, said.

He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply cocaine between July 4 and
Oct 12 last year.

He was arrested on Oct 11 after bringing the veterans back to Britain
through the Channel Tunnel and dropping them off at various locations.

Police and customs officers lay in wait at a service station on the
M25 at Thurrock in Essex, where an accomplice, Dennis Smith,
transferred the drugs to his car.

Smith, also 53, of Christchurch in Dorset, was jailed for 12 years
after pleading guilty to conspiracy to supply at an earlier hearing.

Zoe Johnson, prosecuting, said that the cocaine was 90 per cent pure
and that Turner had made two previous trips to France in July.

Judge Hubert Dunn told Turner: "It is patently a very tragic case because
you have a superb Army record."

But he added: "You brought an enormous quantity of drugs into England.
Class A drugs can, and very often do, lead to the most appalling
degradation and suffering - in some cases complete ruination of lives."

Afterwards, Det Supt Steve Dann said the arrests had disrupted a major
drug network.

"The defendants were involved in other conspiracies to import drugs
with a total street value of around UKP70 million," he said.
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