CRIMINAL CASE NO. 3 OF 2011
COURT: Costa Achelis Tsakiris, you have pleaded guilty to trafficking in a very substantial quantity of heroin at Hong Kong International Airport on 9 July last year. The drugs consisted of 1.60 kilogrammes of a mixture containing 1.01 kilogrammes of heroin hydrochloride and 0.3 kilogrammes of monoacetylmorphine hydrochloride, as well as 0.09 grammes of a damp mixture containing heroin hydrochloride and monoacetylmorphine hydrochloride.
Those drugs were in the form of 126 pellets which you had swallowed prior to arriving in Hong Kong on a flight from Doha on the afternoon of 9 July. This was a flight which connected with a flight you had taken the previous day from Dar Es Salaam. If those drugs had been sold on the streets of Hong Kong at that time, they would have had a retail value of approximately HK$1.2 million.
When you were later interviewed, you claimed that you had been given the drugs in Tanzania for you to swallow and asked to take them to China. You said that you intended to travel to China after arriving in Hong Kong. When you had reached China you would await a telephone call from somebody who would collect the pellets from you.
You admitted that your reward was US$4,000 and you had been given US$300 for expenses. At that time, you claimed that you believed that the pellets contained grass for smoking. I am satisfied that you can have been in no doubt, when you embarked on this enterprise, that you were committing a very serious offence and that very serious consequences would follow if you were caught.
You would have been well aware if somebody were prepared to pay for your return ticket from Tanzania to Hong Kong and also give you US$4,300 that this was a very valuable cargo of drugs. Even if you had been told that the drugs were grass, you would have been well aware that that was highly unlikely to be the case in all the circumstances.
As I know Mr Hagon will have told you, the normal guideline starting point for those who traffic in heroin, where the narcotic content is between 1.2 and 4 kilogrammes, is 23 to 26 years’ imprisonment. In your case, the narcotic content was 1.31 kilogrammes.
In all the circumstances of this case, I am prepared to adopt a starting point at the bottom of the tariff band, namely, 23 years’ imprisonment. Mr Hagon has realistically conceded that the only real mitigation in your case is your plea of guilty, for which you are entitled to the usual discount.
I sentence you to 15 years’ imprisonment.