New victim for drugs factory
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by Karen Miles
• British lorry driver Steve Bryant, imprisoned in Morocco on a drugs conviction he has always disputed, has been joined in jail by a Portuguese driver who has been locked up under identical circumstances.
The Essex owner-driver, convicted of carrying cannabis after he picked up a load of squid from a Moroccan factory, savs the latest conviction underlines the fact that innocent drivers are being jailed.
Both drivers picked up loads from the same factory and were convicted after drugs were found in their cargoes. In Morocco possession of drugs is an absolute offence, so it was no defence that the drivers did not
know the drugs had been hidden in their trucks.
Next week Hugh Kerr, Bryant's Euro MP, is expected to meet the Moroccan ambassador to the European Union, Rachad 13ouhlal, to press for Bryant's freedom.
The Portuguese driver has just been jailed for nine years after leaving the factory with 1,600kg of cannabis in his load of fresh fish.
Stephen Jakobi, director of UK legal pressure group Fair Trials Abroad, says: "It is very obvious that the drugs smuggling factory is still running and innocent drivers are still being put away three years on."
Bryant was disappointed not to receive a pardon last month but another list of prisoners earning pardons is due to be released in May.
Cannabis worth almost £1111 has been found hidden in an artic carrying lettuce to Ireland. The drugs, found when the truck was stopped at Rosslare, constitute one of Ireland's biggest drug seizures. The cannabis was hidden in a false compartment in a belly tank.