A highly trusted cannabis courier caught with £235,000-worth of drugs as he travelled on the M6 in Cumbria has been jailed.
Police attention was drawn to a black Audi A class as it headed north at around 2.30pm on November 10, 2021. It was stopped at Scout Green, between Shap and Tebay, Carlisle Crown Court heard today. Officers noted it had made regular previous trips along the motorway — more than a dozen in total.
Driver Qamar Rashid, 42, remained with the vehicle while 33-year-old passenger Hoang Khanh initially fled but was quickly captured.
Police smelled cannabis, searched the vehicle and on the rear seat was a laundry bag and an Aldi shopping bag containing vacuum-packed cannabis. More was found in the boot. This weighed in at 23.5kg and was potentially worth around £235,000 in total if sold on the street to users.
Khanh, of no fixed address, was jailed for 12 months earlier this year after admitting possession of the class B controlled drug with intent to supply. Rashid, of Grange Street, Walsall, initially denied that charge before entering a guilty plea on the day his case had been listed for trial.
In addition, his phone showed online searches for cannabis and there were also hundreds of contacts with what the court heard was an “unsavoury” mystery man who was said to have lured Rashid into criminal activity.
Rashid claimed he had received death threats from that man if he didn’t pay him £500,000 and provide him with copies of his court case papers.
Enquiries showed there were no threats and in fact a “very friendly relationship between the two with multiple discussions about destinations and postcodes being sent back and forth”, said prosecutor Brendan Burke, who added: “The Crown say he is a wiling and highly trusted courier with the expectation of significant financial reward for his part in the trafficking.”
Rashid, a man with no previous convictions, ran a car repair business and was said by his barrister to have “very much been manipulated. He cared for his partially blind mother and was “terrified” at the prospect of prison.
Recorder Mark Ainsworth jailed Rashid for 30 months, saying: “You only have to sit in these courts for a relatively short time and see a few cases to realise the misery that controlled drugs can cause in society.”
