‘You got me’ says 72- year-old with cannabis

The officers were on the beach at Petils Bay near Bordeaux Harbour and had watched as King arrived in a small boat.

He had with him a rucksack which he placed into a dinghy and rowed to shore, where they challenged him as he stepped out.

King got back into the dinghy and tried to row away, but one of the officers waded into the water and stopped him.

‘It’s there,’ he then said, indicating the rucksack in which they found several packets of a substance that was later confirmed to be 9.7kg of cannabis resin.

King, 72, appeared in the Royal Court from custody after admitting importing the class B drug. He was sent to prison for seven years.

Crown Advocate Fiona Russell said the estimated street value of the drug in Guernsey was between £389,000 and £486,000.

The defendant had a similar previous conviction from 2011 when he was jailed for four years after importing 3.2kg of cannabis resin, also by boat.

King had not sought to profit from this importation, said Advocate Liam Roffey, defending.

The probation report had set out the defendant’s reasons for bringing in the drugs, but he did not want them given out in open court for fear of the effect on his own and his family’s safety.

He had been approached to undertake importation some five years earlier but had turned it down, but on this occasion he had accepted out of fear of the consequences if he had not.

He was not going to be paid for the role he played, and he had only to bring the drugs into the island.

It was not a sophisticated attempt to smuggle drugs and he had been open with the Customs officers from the start.

He had also cooperated by providing access codes to various devices seized as part of the investigation, but no evidence of a plan to smuggle drugs was found on any of them.

King would forever regret his decision to become involved in this offence, Advocate Roffey said. Letters of reference were before the court, one of which said that King had had let himself and his wife down, and he agreed wholeheartedly with this.

Since being taken into custody he had suffered panic attacks and was now being treated for depression.

In a letter from the defendant himself he apologised to the court and the community for his stupid actions and hoped that his wife and family would forgive him.

Judge Russell Finch said that the court found the previous offence to be a very aggravating factor.

It had been a high-risk enterprise and he was caught fair and square.

This was a small jurisdiction and such a substantial amount of cannabis resin would have flooded the market.

King’s seven-year sentence would run from the date of his arrest on 27 May this year.

The forfeiture and destruction of the drugs was ordered. Judge Finch commended the Customs team for their good work.