An Irish drugs smuggler, James Beirne (51), of Strokestown, Co Roscommon, but currently renting a flat in London, has been jailed for 18 years at the Old Bailey in London for trying to smuggle cocaine worth £6.5 million sterling into Britain.
Also jailed was Charles Russell (58), of Prince of Wales Road, Kentish Town, London, who was sentenced to life in 1981 for the contract killing of a New Zealand drug dealer. The victim's naked, headless body was found in a quarry in Shorley, Lancashire, England. Two other men, Peruvian Miguel UrenaWong (33), and a 58-year-old Irish defendant, who cannot be named because he faces another trial, were also jailed for the conspiracy to smuggle 50 kg of cocaine between September 1st, 1996, and April 30th, 1997. Russell was jailed for 22 years.
Urena-Wong was given 18 years and the unnamed Irishman was sentenced to 20 years. Their convictions come after a series of three trials spanning two years, which is estimated to have cost £6 million. The court heard that one mistake ended luxury-loving Beirne's hopes of funding his champagne lifestyle with the huge profits he expected from a consignment of £6.5 million worth of Peruvian cocaine. Beirne and his fellow drug smugglers had devised what they believed would be a foolproof method of bringing the cocaine into England. The drugs were hidden inside a shipment of timber.
The plan was first to send the wood containing the drugs to Estonia, which exports a huge amount of timber to Europe and elsewhere. However, the smugglers' assumption that the merchant ship would go straight to Estonia was completely wrong. Its first stop was Felixstowe in Essex where the cargo aroused suspicions and Customs found the cocaine and seized it. But to make sure they caught the smugglers when the ship later returned to Felixstowe from Estonia they allowed it to resume its voyage without making any complaints to the captain.
Beirne, who has one daughter and is separated from his wife, who still lives in Strokestown, was previously convicted of a krugerrand fraud in Jersey, Channel Islands, in the early 1980s when he was jailed for three years.