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1ST - 7TH OCTOBER 2019 - EDITION 807
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El Raso expat drug smugglers jailed A
n expat couple from El Raso have been jailed for drug smuggling. The pensioners Roger Clarke, 72,
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and his former secretary wife Sue, 71, were convicted by three judges of drugs trafficking after a one-day trial at Lisbon’s main criminal court. They were sentenced to eight years each and told they will serve their sentences in Portugal instead of being sent back to Britain as a state prosecutor had requested. The British pensioner whispered “Jesus Christ! I wasn’t expecting more than four” to his wife in court as the sentences were read for smuggling £1 million pounds of cocaine on a luxury Caribbean cruise. Lead judge Margarida Alves told the couple: “We are totally convinced you knew the contents of these four cases. You did what you did not because you are drug consumers but because you wanted to make an easy profit.” The former Bromley, Kent-born chef had told the court he had no idea the cases had drugs inside and was taking them back to the UK for a friend called Lee who had promised to pay him £800
“betrayed” by people he trusted and insisted the Brits were drug mules who used the four cruises they took to South America in two years as a front for their crimes. And she questioned how they could pay for the cruises costing around £18,000 when they survived on a joint Continued on page 3
Roger and Sue Clarke
and bragged he could sell them for a massive profit at Harrods. He said UK-based Jamaican businessman ‘Lee’ and another associate called Dee, who he named in court as George Wilmot, had asked him to help negotiate the import of exotic fruit during Caribbean cruise stopovers and he brought the suitcases back for them as a sideline. State prosecutor Manuela Brito rubbished his court claim he had been
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