UK "Coke Teens" get nine months

Accra, Jan. 23, GNA - An Accra Juvenile Court on Wednesday jailed two British teenagers arrested at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) on July 2, last year with six kilograms of cocaine, a year each.

The sentence takes effect from July 18, 2007 when they were charged before the court and they would serve their prison terms at the Maamobi Correctional Home in Accra. Dozens of journalists, who thronged the Court, were not allowed to sit in.

Mr Gary Nichols, Press Attache at the British High Commission speaking to the media after the judgement said the teens had already spent months in custody and would serve the rest of their at the borstal home.

He said the maximum sentence that the judge could give the teens under the law was three years but he had to look at the circumstances of the case to give the sentence.

The two girls aged 16 years each were first put before the Greater Accra Regional Tribunal on July 6, 2007 for possessing narcotic drugs without lawful authority and attempted exportation of narcotics drugs. The girls were escorted in and out of the Court under tight security and were protected from media cameras.

The girls, who lived in London, arrived at Kotoka International Airport at 2030 hours on July 2, to board a British Airways flight back to London.

While going through departure formalities, personnel of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) at KIA searched their laptop bags and found white substance, later confirmed to be cocaine by the Ghana Standards Board, according to Mr Mark Ewuntomah, Acting Deputy Executive Secretary of NACOB.

During interrogation, the girls admitted ownership.

In their investigation caution statements they alleged that one Farham Timothy, alias Fire, sent them to Ghana to meet one Kwame and Emmanuel for the laptop bags containing the substances to be brought to him for a fee of 6,000 pounds.