31/05/2007 01:00:00
Scotland: 250,000 UKP cannabis man is jailed
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A VIETNAMESE man who was cultivating a major cannabis farm in a city
centre house has been jailed for four and a half years.
A judge also recommended that Hai Phu Nguyen should be deported -
despite holding a passport from a European Union country - because of
his involvement in organised crime.
Police discovered enough plants in the house in Glasgow to produce
£250,000 worth of the drug.
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At the High Court in Edinburgh, Lord Hodge told Nguyen, 24, who holds a
Slovak passport: "Cannabis was cultivated on a very large scale in a
sophisticated process which took the plant to its harvest in a cycle of
about 10 or 12 weeks."
Nguyen had earlier admitted cultivating the drugs at a house in
Westminster Terrace, in the Anderston area, in November last year.
Police were told the house was being used for growing drugs and got a
strong smell of cannabis when they raided the premises.
The house was being rented out for £2000 a month and a £10,000
investment was made in growing the crop.
The only room in the large house not being used for drug growing was the
kitchen where Nguyen slept on a mattress.
Four rooms containing 580 cannabis plants in pots.
Nguyen told police that a man had asked him to stay at the address to
grow plants for medicine'.
Defence solicitor advocate Des Finnieston said Nguyen had arrived in
Glasgow and had gone to restaurants frequented by South-east Asian
nationals seeking work and a place to stay.
He was offered accommodation and was asked to look after the place.
Mr Finnieston said: "He states he received no financial gain from this
undertaking, but he was being fed. It can be said for the accused that
he was a very small cog in this operation."
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/
Source:
http://www.ukcia.org/news/shownewsarticle.php?articleid=12575
Author:
Glasgow Evening Times via UKCIA
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