No charge in heroin case
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• A haulier who carried the largest quantity of heroin ever seized by UK Customs has been found innocent of any crime.
The operator, who has not been named by Customs, picked up an unaccompanied container from Felixstowe. He delivered the load, in which was hidden 450kg of heroin, to a warehouse in Hornsey, North London, where it was discovered by the authorities last week.
Customs accepts that the haulier had no idea the load contained the drug, which has a street value of up to .E50m.
Two Turks living in London were arrested during the raid at the rented warehouse, which
had been used to store imported clothes. They have been since been charged with offences related to the drugs haul.
The two-month surveillance of the site which preceded the raid, code-named Operation Absorb, has no connection with the arrest earlier this year of Turkish driver Durmas Yamakoglu, who was found with 89kg of heroin worth £7m in his truck's wind deflector.
Yamakoglu was driving a British-registered lorry for a London-based haulier, He has been charged with the importation of drugs and will appear at Canterbury Crown Court sometime after 21 June.