Four men received 13-year sentence combined for drug smuggling from Spain’s Costa Blanca whilst former policeman says legalise drugs
The four men from Manchester were caught by police with £800,000 worth of cannabis and have been handed down sentences by a judge to a total 13 years and nine months in prison.
Daniel Gore, 41, Javid Ahmed, 49, John Arnold, 56, and Scott Hoolighan, 36, were arrested in February 2018 when 110 kilos of cannabis was held up by officers as the stash travelled in a flatbed van as it was transported from Northolt, London to Manchester in the north of England.
The drug smugglers tried to avoid detection by swapping between flatbed vans midway through the journey and stopping and starting at various pinpointed points enroute using encrypted mobile telephones to comminicate.
The drugs stash had been concealed within industrial sized tins labelled ‘Panko Breadcrumbs’ and had been transported from Alicante, Spain by a legal transporter before being collected in England’s capital city, London by the drug gang.
The smuggle was assisted by an Albanian gang mob based in the Spanish city of Alicante on Spain’s Costa Blanca.
Gang leader Gore pleaded guilty to conspiring to import and supply class B drugs in November 2019.
Hoolighan, Arnold and Ahmed were found guilty of conspiring to supply class B drugs following two separate trials at Manchester Crown Court.
Gore was sentenced to five years in prison and Hoolighan to three years and nine months, whilst Arnold and Ahmed were both jailed for two years.
Although in Spain, Jim Lennard a retired police officer and resident of Alicante City, who now advocates the use of cannabis told Global247news of his feelings after the sentencing in his former home city of Manchester, he said:
” Drugs need to be legalised and then it would cut out the black market of these drugs smugglers, it would cut out the black market profits and save a fortune in police resources, millions and millions are wasted every year on these type of operations, yes the law has apprehended criminals, great, but the bigger point is if you legalise drugs you eradicate the market in the first instance, especially where Cannabis is involved, the UK needs to legalise Cannabis once and for all especially, let’s be honest it’s smoked openly anyway and users are only given a caution these days, which is another waste of police resources.”
” Drug gangs like this one will always continue when there are black market profits to be made,” he said.
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