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UK: Turkish sailors smuggle a huge haul of cocaine into Europe, sentenced to 42 years

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turkish-sailors-cobainLONDON – Reuters

Two Turkish sailors were sentenced to a total of 42 years on Aug. 12 after their attempt to smuggle a huge haul of cocaine into Europe was thwarted, partly due to some swift international co-operation between Britain and Tanzania.

Some 3.2 tons of cocaine, the biggest Class A drug find ever made in Britain, was found on a ship intercepted off the east coast of Scotland last year.

Drugs worth 512 million pounds ($664 million) were being shipped over to the Netherlands, prosecutors said, after travelling from South America via Guyana and Tenerife.

British authorities intercepted the cargo off the coast of Aberdeen in April 2015 after the go-ahead from Tanzania, where the ship was registered, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.

“Although there was strong intelligence that the boat was carrying a large volume of drugs, it could not be boarded in international waters by the U.K. authorities without the permission of the Tanzanian government – something they had never previously granted,” the CPS said in a statement.

But the CPS’s Criminal Justice Advisor in Tanzania managed to obtain authority “from the highest political level” within 24 hours, it added.

“Without the swift actions of our Criminal Justice Adviser there was a high risk that the vessel may have escaped and we would never have been able to bring these men to justice,” said Sue Patten, head of the CPS International Justice and Organized Crime Division.

The traffickers had hidden the drugs, wrapped in 128 bales, together weighing as much as a grown elephant, in a tank deep within the hull of the vessel.

“This was one of the most intricate concealments we’ve ever encountered,” said Tony McMullin, a regional director at Britain’s Border Force.

Captain Mümin Şahin, 47, and first officer Emin Özmen, 51, from Istanbul were sentenced to 22 and 20 years in prison, respectively, at the High Court in Glasgow.

August/12/2016

Flush with coke: UK so high on cocaine that users have ‘contaminated tap water’

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The Sunday Times reports

Experts from the drinking water inspectorate found that cocaine use in Britain is now so high it has contaminated the drinking water supply, even after it has gone through 000_par7805003.siintensive purification treatments, UK media reports.

Scientists found supplies of drinking water contained traces of benzoylecgonine, the metabolized form of the drug after it has been processed by the human body. Benzoylecgonine is the same compound used for urine-based tests for cocaine, the Sunday Times reports.

The findings are an eye-opening indication of how widely the drug is used in Britain.

“We have near the highest level of cocaine use in western Europe. It has also been getting cheaper and cheaper at the same time as its use has been going up,” Steve Rolles, from the drug policy think-tank Transform, told the Sunday Times.

Nearly 700,000 people aged 16-59 are estimated to take cocaine every year in Britain, and there are around 180,000 addicted users of crack cocaine, according to the charity DrugScope.

Health officials stressed that the amounts found in drinking water were very low and unlikely to represent a danger to the public, however.

A recent report from Public Health England found that quantitiess of cocaine at 4 nanograms per liter, around one-quarter of what was found before the water was treated.

“Estimated exposures for most of the detected compounds are at least thousands of times below doses seen to produce adverse effects in animals and hundreds of thousands below human therapeutic doses,” the report states.

Although cocaine use in Britain is among the highest in Europe, its use has actually decreased since the 2008 financial crisis and has been steadily falling among 16-24 year olds, who no longer see it as glamorous – largely because its widespread availability has reduced its subversive appeal.

But among older generations, it still retains its whiff of subversive decadence and glamour.

“It’s ridiculous, I’ve been at parties when there have been more people in the bathroom than outside it, yet this strange etiquette is still upheld. I think it’s partly about exclusion and inclusion – who’s in, who’s out, who’s cool and who’s not. It’s remarkably childish, but if you’re a middle-aged professional who doesn’t get out much, then that bathroom can seem like the hottest ticket in town,” Matthew, a 49-year-old corporate lawyer, told The Guardian.