CRIMINAL CASE NO. 337 OF 2012
COURT: The defendant has pleaded guilty to one count of trafficking in a dangerous drug, namely 1.27 kilograms of a mixture containing 0.71 of a kilogram of heroin hydrochloride. This is the second Tanzanian citizen I have sentenced today and one of many that I have recently sentenced for similar offences.
The defendant, holder of a Tanzanian passport, was stopped at the Hong Kong International Airport upon arrival from Doha. He was suspected of having drugs concealed in his body. He was sent to the hospital and, subsequently, he discharged 100 pellets of the drug mentioned in the indictment.
The retail value of the seized drug is in the amount of about HK$995,680.
The defendant is aged 33 and I am told he has family in Tanzania and because he is poor, he was tempted to make a quick sum of money by trafficking in these drugs.
It seems that this court has to keep saying over and over again that the only way to combat drug trafficking is that of educating the people in the countries where these drug traffickers come from, these couriers, that it is not worth whatever sum of money they are given to carry the drugs into Hong Kong because Hong Kong courts take a very, very serious view of drug trafficking and we impose very heavy sentences, even for couriers of these drugs. As I have said earlier, today he is the second Tanzanian to be sentenced for a similar offence.
The Hong Kong Court of Appeal has laid down guidelines for drug trafficking and they recommend that for trafficking in between 600 to 1,200 grammes of heroin hydrochloride merits a sentence of 20 to 23 years’ imprisonment after trial. This was set down in the case of Abdallah [2009] 2 HKC 297.
In this case, the defendant was found with some 710 grammes of heroin hydrochloride. That would put the sentence into the range of the 20 to 23-year bracket that I have said. So I would consider that a proper starting point in this case would be one of 20 years, but because the defendant was importing the drugs into Hong Kong, I would give a further 1 year as an aggravating factor. So the total starting point would be 21 years.
Because the defendant has pleaded guilty, he is entitled to one-third off which, therefore, gives a sentence of 14 years’ imprisonment, so the defendant is sent away for 14 years.