END OF THE ROAD FOR BANGKOK-BASED BRITISH DRUG DEALER

He played the part of a typical wealthy expatriate. Comfortably off, but not
showy or vulgar in taste. From his home in Bangkok he sipped cocktails with
politicians, police and military men and talked confidently about his work
as a security specialist. His interests included gem dealing, starting a
fibre optics plant which would provide much needed employment for many
Thais, and plans to be an impresario bringing foreign rock bands to perform
in the Thai capital.

Michael Mescal, 46, sent his two sons, aged 14 and 12, to the prestigious
Dulwich International School, built on the holiday island of Phuket for the
sons of those rich and famous in Thailand, who find snob value in a school
cloned from one which boasted author P.G. Wodehouse and Arctic Explorer
Ernest Shackleton among its former pupils.

And he played the part of a proud father earlier this year indignantly
re-assuring headmaster Christopher T. Charleson, who sent a circular to
parents asking them to be on the look-out for drug abuse, that none of his
household would even countenance such horrific behaviour.

But last night Michael "Omar" Mescal was behind bars accused of being quite
positively the biggest "Mr Big" in the cocaine trafficking business to
Britain and Europe and master of anything which could be snorted, swallowed,
smoked, or injected.

He was arrested as his two sons looked on in amazement outside an
Argentinian Beef restaurant in Antwerp, Belgium.

As he stepped out of the restaurant with Sean, 14, and David, 12, he was
served with a warrant for arrest issued by an Italian Court, accusing him of
conspiracy to smuggle a staggering 780 kilogrammes of cocaine into Europe in
one container alone.

Mescal is accused of being the mastermind behind a container shipment of
Columbian cocaine, which arrived in the Italian port of Livorno in January
1999 aboard the Croatian ship the Slavonija, registered in the port of
Rijeka.

The two men he was meeting, Briton John Nelson and Dutch national Michael
Gatting were also taken away for questioning.

Within an hour of his arrest, in Bangkok Thai drugs officers made similar
raids on his offices, as Italian, Australian and British investigators
watched close by.

At his home Thai police found a framed photograph of a well known Thai Army
official. And in a desk they found the handbook of the "Office of the
Narcotics Control Board".

A 34-year-old Australian national, Gareth Paul Mayer, was arrested on the
spot. In his bag police found a computer disc with the US military-made
programme "BC-Wipe". The programme not only wipes a disc but re-writes over
it seven times preventing anybody from actually retrieving incriminating
files. As an alleged "cyber-trafficker", Mescal had the trappings of James
Bond.

But unlike fellow Briton David Chell from Stoke-on-Trent, who taught English
in Bangkok and who this month was sentenced to death in Malaysia for
trafficking in 189 grammes of cocaine, Mescal, say investigators, "preferred
to talk in tons".

When Belgian police took him into custody the first turn was made in the
lock of a seven-year-long investigation carried out over six continents to
catch a man whom New Scotland Yard and British Customs believe to be one of
the world's most elusive traffickers, a man who used state-of-the-art
internet and computer technology and his own "security firm" to keep his
pursuers at bay.

But investigators are unlikely to rest until they see a judge put him behind
bars for a long time.

Michael "Omar" Mescal had only successfully been prosecuted once, despite
police claims of a lifetime in the business. In 1979 he was sentenced to
three years jail in Germany for trafficking in heroin. Since that day he has
made sure that his many minions took the rap if anything went wrong.

LONG AND WINDING TRAIL

He started off in London wheeling a barrow of fruit and vegetables. At the
time of his arrest last week, say investigators, he was on first name terms
with the chiefs of South American cartels, and syndicate bosses from
Acapulco to Zanzibar.

Since 1980 he had always based himself in Thailand, but never imported drugs
and never committed any other offences in his adopted country. In Thailand,
if anything, he was regarded as a "nice guy" who would lend money to fellow
nationals in trouble.

And despite his conviction in Germany 1979 it was not until February 13,
1985 that he again came to the attention of British Customs in London, when
two officers thought he merited special attention as he was departing
through Heathrow Airport with a red Samsonite suitcase.

They filed a SMR (Suspect Movement Report). Within a month the US Drug
Enforcement Administration had reported back that Mescal had met with three
drug suspects in La Paz, Bolivia.

An operation began codenamed "Renaissance" and a Customs investigation team
"The Romeos", led by a Scotish-born Customs investigator Hugh Donagher was
instructed to "take Mescal out of the game".

Mescal had acquired several wives in Sri Lanka, where he actually did gems
dealing, and as a result had been "reborn" a Muslim and taken the "Muslim"
name Omar-hence the operation's codename.

The operation was filmed by BBC producer Paul Hamann in the "fly on the
wall" British TV series The Duty Men for an episode called The Red Sammy.

Other associates including his younger brother David, were also seen and
filmed taking Samsonite cases out of the country and each time the cases
were marked by Customs. Mescal's London headquarters was identified as a
house in Earls Court, West London, which he had rented temporarily, but his
real headquarters was established as a home in Pattaya, and a farm run by
his ex-wife "Toy" Mansiri in Loei Province in northeastern Thailand.

When Customs Officers got to examine one of the Samsonite cases they
discovered it contained a false bottom-one of the most skillfully
constructed they had ever seen.

In turn they photographed and logged Mescal with a number of his British
couriers, who included two Britons named Anthony Favell, and Maxwell Treacy,
as a BBC team looked on.

On December 4, 1986 when Favell returned to London via Brazil he was
stopped. When Customs checked the case they found it was the same one taken
out of the country three months earlier by Mescal himself-and it was packed
with 4 kilos of cocaine.

The arrest was made to look as if it was merely a chance affair and the
operation was allowed to run. Favell was subsequently jailed for 12 years in
Britain.

Three couriers, who tried to smuggle 4.5 kilos into Sydney, Australia,
Maxwell Treacy, Michael Bond and James Flanagan, working for a "Mr Big" in
Thailand were subsequently jailed for 18 years, 16 years and 15 years
respectively.

But while Mescal and his brother were regarded in Australia as the
organisers, they were acquitted by a jury in Britain. For Mescal told
Isleworth Crown Court in West London that he was in the gems business, not
drugs. Based in Bangkok, he said, "In such a business not everything
followed orthodox rules." He smuggled gems from Cambodia, Sri Lanka and
South America, and needed the false bottom suitcases for that purpose alone.

He had merely lent the suitcases to some acquaintances, who needed them, he
presumed for the same purpose. He was shocked and angry that the cases had
been used for drugs. His meetings with the other men were purely to discuss
the gems business, or of a social nature.

The jury believed his story.

As he walked from the court, according Peter Gillman, author of the book of
the series The Duty Men, he offered a Customs man his hand saying: "No hard
feelings." "You're the luckiest man alive. You were looking at 28 years,"
came the reply.

"But I was innocent," he said.

"Bollocks," said the drugs investigator.

LOW PROFILE

Since that date Mescal has been even more meticulous in covering his tracks,
say police. He moved from Pattaya into a house in a lane off Bangkok's
Sukhumvit Road, impossible to observe because at only 12 feet wide no
observation vehicle could be parked in it.

He set up an Import-Export company called "Solaris" from a street two miles
away in the university suburb of Ramkhamhaeng and with him as partner in his
company he took a Thai-Chinese called Kaem Trakulthamma.

Kaem , who has an apartment at the Yada Residence in a small soi off
Sukhumvit 39, is better known to the Hong Kong and Dutch authorities as
Wanchai Tantrongkijkool. On February 2, 1982 he was extradited from Hong
Kong to Amsterdam and was subsequently jailed for 12 years for heroin
trafficking.

A police file on Mescal, distributed to several country forces, soon
described him as having a "very refined operating structure".

"He has developed hierarchical structures operating in many parts of the
world. He has forged friendly relationships with politicians, military
personnel and members of the police forces in Asia and South America." By
1994 his standard of living was such that, without paying staff salaries,
his personal expenditure was in excess of US$10,000 (about 400,000 baht) a
month. And by that time his name had cropped up in several international
investigations. In 1989 his name was also positively linked to a 5-ton
shipment of cannabis to Felixstowe. The cannabis was hidden in a container
marked "Ceramic Plates".

In 1990 he was named by a Judge in Chelmsford Crown Court in Essex as the
"supplier" of 3.5 tons of cannabis which was shipped from Klong Toey in
Bangkok to Tilbury docks, 30 miles east of London, in a consignment of Thai
ceramic wall tiles.

Said a Customs Office at Tilbury at the time: "There was just one layer of
tiles. It's wall to wall dope".

British investigators taking part in an operation codenamed "Croc" flew to
Thailand and with the help of the Nana Drug Squad had him arrested on
suspicion of conspiracy to traffic the cannabis to the "Adams Family"-a well
known South London criminal gang.

But the Customs men were unable to get sufficient evidence and Thai police
ordered them to return belongings they had seized in their investigation.

SHEER CUNNING

Just why Mescal has eluded narcotics agencies for so long can be attributed
to two factors.

With the influence acquired, bought with money, British and other foreign
anti-narcotics agencies thought he would probably successfully fight any
moves on him and thus none were made.

The second reason, claimed a senior retired British Customs man, was his
"sheer bloody cunning".

A former Bangkok-based British Drugs Liaison officer in Bangkok said: "He's
got his own security business. He has his own people tailing him. So if
police are tailing him, his own tails are tailing them too. In Italy he had
four men doing his security. It was like a three-ringed circus. He is not
educated, but has an animal cunning." He never used banks, but sent bags of
money abroad with accomplices, the officer said.

Currently Italian police have also issued a warrant of arrest for another
Australian aide, Thomas Edward Keown, 39, who has been looking after land
owned by Mescal, through his ex-wife "Toy" Mansiri in the Thai provinces of
Loei, Nong Bualamphu and Petchaburi.

To all intents and purposes Mescal's Bangkok lifestyle was unremarkable. He
would spend two hours at a gym several days a week while in town.

And when he partied he would take his associates to two fashionable clubs
"Narcissus" and "Leo's Grotto". Much of the time he spent in quiet
socialising.

Thai police tailed him over several years each time recording departures on
trips round the world-in the last six months they have included South
Africa, South America, Spain and Mex ico.

Each time he returned from abroad Mescal stated his place of residence as
the Hilton Hotel in Bangkok, which backs onto the British Embassy in
Wireless Road.

Thai narcotics police discovered he kept his money in a range of bank safety
deposit boxes and in the bank accounts of Thai women he trusted.

He also kept a series of apartments available for work appointments.

In late 1997 and January 1998, however, Keown and Mescal were watched
leaving Bangkok and their tail was picked up twice in Italy.

British Customs, and Thai and Italian police already had information on a
planned cocaine deal.

The latest operation against Mescal called "Operation Deadfall" was in full
swing.

When the container of cocaine arrived in January last year Italian police
waited for three weeks until it was picked up and they agreed to "let it
run", but instead of the plan agreed with the Dutch, French and British
allowing the cocaine to go to its final destination, Amsterdam, where
narcotics officers believed the drug would be drip fed into Britain and
other European countries, Italian police had cold feet at the last minute.

The truck was stopped at the last minute before it crossed the Italian
border into the Swiss canton of Lugano. Only the driver was arrested and
charged.

PRIVATE TRAGEDY

The arrest of Michael Mescal means that his sons Sean and David will be
deprived of both parents.

Last year, "Toy" Mansiri, who Mescal divorced six years ago, was brutally
murdered in the Thai northeastern province of Nong Bualamphu.

She was strangled and her body was cut up with an axe and dumped in a lake.

It is believed she was murdered by a new suitor who had failed to get his
hand on her wealth.

A reward was put out for the killers, believed to have been funded by
Mescal.