10 years jail for huge drug haul
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• A self-employed lorry driver frotn Sheerness has been jailed for 10 yean; for smuggling 0.5 million-worth of cannabis, hidden in a load of Spanish onions.
Michael Nightingale was arrested by Dover customs officers in January last year after a sniffer dog discovered 1,000kg of cannabis in his trailer.
Nightingale, who had picked up the load of onions near Seville, had not sealed the lorry at the depot and his tachograph recorded a long delay on the following day—a period when he insisted he had been too ill to drive.
The tachograph revealed that he had driven about 140 miles out of his way—Nightingale claimed he got lost en route. He denied the smuggling charge on the grounds that he had no idea the drugs were on board.
"I felt terrible," Nightingale told the jury at Canterbury Crown Court. "I could not believe it when the drugs were found."