15 August 2007

Drug smugglers busted after flights from UAE

A British passport-holder who tried to smuggle $1.5 million worth of heroin in his stomach, from Dubai to Perth, has been sentenced to eight years in prison by Australian authorities. George Wilfred Lionel Budd, 25, had pleaded guilty to importing a border-controlled drug into Australia after being stopped by customs officers on December 10 last year, because he “seemed nervous”, police said.
After being taken by police for a medical examination he passed 100 cylindrical objects, each about five or six centimetres long, containing a total of 794 grammes of heroin cut with other materials. Budd, who is married with a two-year-old daughter, told police he had met a man called Mike in Dubai who offered him $7,000 (dhs25,690) to courier the drugs into Austraiia.
He claims to have gone to Dubai with a friend who had promised to help him find construction work but he found it difficult to gain employment because he was poorly educated as a consequence of being barred from school for cannabis use.
In a separate incident, a 29-year-old British citizen flying from Dubai to Sydney, was arrested two days ago at the airport in Australia, after attempting to import 500 ecstasy tablets hidden in the waistband of his jeans. He had been picked out by customs officers for a baggage search, during which customs say the man confessed to carrying the pills along with a small amount of cocaine.
He faced court yesterday charged with two counts of importing illegal drugs. Source

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