Sascha Wil­son

A Niger­ian na­tion­al caught try­ing to ex­port co­caine in fish­ing reels to the Unit­ed King­dom has been jailed for 30 months.

Amaeike Frank Ile, 40, of En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas plead­ed guilty dur­ing a vir­tu­al ap­pear­ance be­fore San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trate Anslem Le­an­der.

He was ar­rest­ed on Jan­u­ary 13 at the TTPost of­fice at Cof­fee Street, San Fer­nan­do. The court heard that around 2.15 pm PC Mat­loo re­ceived in­for­ma­tion and went to the TTPost of­fice where he met Ile at the counter.

He had al­ready signed the ex­por­ta­tion doc­u­ments to send the pack­ages to the Unit­ed King­dom. When Mat­loo told him about the in­for­ma­tion he had, Ile said: “Of­fi­cer, it have about 150 grammes of co­caine in the pack­ages.”

Up­on ex­am­in­ing the pack­ages, Mat­loo ob­served five fish­ing reels con­tain­ing co­caine in a pow­dery form, wrapped in car­bon pa­per with clear tape.

When cau­tioned, he said: “This is the first time I do­ing this.”

He was ar­rest­ed and tak­en to Mara­bel­la Po­lice Sta­tion where Cus­toms and Ex­cise of­fi­cers were con­tact­ed. Cus­toms Of­fi­cer Rishi Sama­roo sub­se­quent­ly charged Ile for at­tempt­ing to ex­port pro­hib­it­ed goods and pack­ag­ing items in a man­ner to de­ceive Cus­toms and Ex­cise of­fi­cers.

Mat­loo charged him with pos­ses­sion of 175 grammes of co­caine for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing. Ask­ing for le­nien­cy, Ile’s at­tor­ney Cedric Nep­tune said it was ev­i­dent by the penal­ties that the of­fences were se­ri­ous.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that Ile had no pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions or pend­ing mat­ters.

He said Ile en­gaged in the il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty be­cause he was in dif­fi­cul­ties with as­so­ciates. How­ev­er, Nep­tune said Ile ac­cept­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for his ac­tions and was re­morse­ful.

Cus­toms and Ex­cise se­nior pros­e­cu­tor Har­richa­ran Kassie asked the mag­is­trate to con­sid­er the se­ri­ous­ness of the of­fence.

He ten­dered the pack­ages, the fish­ing reels, co­caine and the ex­por­ta­tion doc­u­ments bear­ing Ile’s sig­na­ture in­to ev­i­dence.

Pros­e­cu­tor Cley­on Seedan was al­so in the mat­ter.

The mag­is­trate sen­tenced him to 30 months on each charge to run con­cur­rent­ly.

Ile faced an­oth­er charge of pos­ses­sion of co­caine for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing. This stemmed from a search of his home where the po­lice al­leged­ly found 446 grammes of co­caine.

That mat­ter was trans­ferred to the Ch­agua­nas Court and would be heard next Wednes­day.