ANKARA: Two Turkish men convicted of smuggling £500 million worth of cocaine on board a ship in the North Sea have each been jailed for at least 20 years.
Mumin Sahin and Emin Ozmen were found guilty after a trial at the High Court in Glasgow after three tonnes of the Class A drug were discovered inside the MV Hamal about 100 miles off the coast of Aberdeen. The 2015 seizure is said to be the biggest single cocaine haul ever recovered at sea in Europe.
The drugs were found hidden in a specially-adapted secret hold in the Tanzanian-registered tugboat, which was sailing from Istanbul to Tenerife and then to the North Sea, when it was stopped by the Royal Navy frigate HMS Somerset and Border Force cutter HMC Valiant.
Sahin, 47, was sentenced to 22 years while Ozmen, 51, was handed down a 20-year term at the High Court in Glasgow.
Judge Lord Kinclaven told the men the quantity of drugs was “not only significant but massive” and drugs trafficking had a “devastating impact” on people and communities.
He said: “You were involved in a most serious operation of commercial scale involving the transportation of cocaine by ship, in an operation which crossed international and indeed intercontinental boundaries.”
He told the ship’s captain Sahin, he was “not at the top of the drugs tree” but had played an important role in the offence, while second captain Ozmen’s role was “to some extent a lesser one”.
