08/05/2009

Sentencing Due Over Record-breaking Drug Find

Three men charged in connection with one of Ireland's biggest ever drug seizures are due to be sentenced today.

Philip Doo, 52, and David Mufford ,44, both from Devon in England, along with 42-year-old Christopher Wiggins - who is also English but has an address in Malaga in Spain - have pleaded guilty at the Circuit Criminal Court in Cork last month to possession of cocaine for sale or supply.

The men were arrested after the naval service and customs officers boarded a yacht off the west Cork coast last November.

The yacht was later found to contain over 1.5 tonnes of cocaine with an estimated street value of €650m, and was the largest seizure of contraband ever made off the Irish coast.

The three men were arrested 170 miles off the south-west coast of Ireland after authorities infiltrated a transatlantic drug trafficking scam.

Europe's anti-drug trafficking agency Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre-Narcotics (MAOC-N) had tracked the vessel, named Dances with Waves, before Irish officials moved in.

Irish navy, gardai and customs swooped on the 60-foot ocean-going boat on November 5, when it ran into difficulties and was at risk of capsizing.

(DW/BMcC)

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