The Royal Court heard how Jamie Malcolm Ferbrache, 31, was arrested in February in North Yorkshire, where he was working as head chef in a pub, and brought back to the island. He had been in custody ever since.
Ferbrache and two other men, Daniel Mark Gauvain and Luke Arron Blondel, were jointly charged with the importation of 9.37kg of the class B drug. The defendant and Gauvain denied the offence but were found guilty of it at trial in November 2020. Blondel, who was working as a baggage handler for Aurigny at the time, admitted it.
Gauvain and Blondel were sentenced for their parts in January 2021 at a hearing that Ferbrache failed to attend.
The trial had heard how Ferbrache and Gauvain had travelled by air to Manchester. When they returned, the cannabis was in Ferbrache’s checked-in suitcase. Blondel removed a rucksack containing the cannabis from Ferbrache’s suitcase while it was in the luggage hold. All three were arrested at the time.
Ferbrache had also denied possessing seven tablets of a class C-rated steroid and failing to provide the pin code to his mobile phone to law enforcement.
The court rejected his arguments that he had thought the tablets were lawful, and that he had forgotten the pin code to his phone, and found him guilty of the offences.
In 2014 he was jailed for 21 months by the Royal Court for supplying drugs.
Defending, Advocate Samuel Steel said the man who committed these offences several years ago and the one sitting in the dock now were different people. At the time of committing these offences he was prepared to risk anything to feed his drug habit but had now been drug-free for four years. One sign of the change, he said, was that he accepted his guilt and he wished to apologise for what he had done.
His client’s involvement in what was the importation of a commercial quantity of cannabis had been at the lower end of the scale, he said. He acted merely as a courier and for only modest financial reward.
His UK employer had submitted a reference on his behalf.
Ferbrache had taken another person’s ID when he fled the island, though he had not been asked to produce it. He asked the court to show exceptional mercy and impose either a community service order or a suspended prison sentence.
Judge Catherine Fooks said the court considered the defendant’s role in the importation to have been a full one for financial gain. His failure to disclose his pin code was a serious matter, for which the court was entitled to conclude that he must have had something to hide. His decision to leave the island had caused significant delays to the administration of justice.
‘Unusually, in this case we do have evidence that you have turned your life around, described by one expert as “a transformation’’,’ she said. ‘But you should not have left Guernsey in the first place. This was a sophisticated crime that had the potential to harm many people on the island.’
Ferbrache was jailed for six years and six months for the importation, six months for the pin-code offence, and five months for failing to surrender to court custody. All were consecutive. One month concurrent was imposed for the drug possession, and forfeiture and destruction of his mobile phone was ordered.
Judge Fooks re-convened at the Magistrate’s Court after the hearing. Ferbrache was jailed for two weeks, consecutive to the Royal Court matter but concurrent on each, for using a motor vehicle without insurance or a licence.
He was also banned from driving for four years. No separate penalty was imposed for possessing one tablet of the class C drug gabapentin. All matters related to when a car he was driving was stopped by police in the Grand Bouet in 2020 and guilty pleas had been entered.
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