A MECHANIC was cleared in England yesterday of playing a role in a €229 million cocaine-smuggling plot into Ireland.
John Edney (57) was accused of arranging for three Land Rovers for use by a gang trying to smuggle more than 1,500kg of the drug off the Cork coast in July 2007.
A jury at London’s Blackfriars Crown Court yesterday found him not guilty of conspiring to supply class A drugs.
Retired Metropolitan Police detective Michael Daly (49), who organised the logistics, and Alan Wells (56) have admitted their parts in the conspiracy. They will be sentenced later.
Edney, from Sutton-at-Hone, Kent, had told the jury he thought the Land Rovers were going to be used at a fishing complex in France, and had no idea there was a link with a drugs plot.
The men behind the plot tried to land 62 bales of cocaine on a remote part of the Cork coast using a rigid-hull inflatable boat. Prosecutors said the drugs were transferred to the boat from a catamaran which had crossed the Atlantic from the Caribbean.
However, the boat ran out of fuel in rough seas off the Irish coast on July 2nd, 2007, and began to sink, leaving Gerard Hagan and Joe Daly to swim ashore near Dunlough Bay, Co Cork.
Martin Wanden, Joe Daly and Perry Wharrie were convicted after a trial in Cork, while Hagan pleaded guilty. Wanden had to be rescued by helicopter and was taken to hospital, where he gave a false name.
Mark Gadsden, prosecuting, told the court that Michael Daly was “pivotal” to the conspiracy, organising the logistics, purchasing the boat and a rescue vessel, and finding “safe houses” to be rented near the disused pier where it was intended the drugs would be brought ashore.