GARDA DOUBTS OVER NEW DRUGS LAW

Gardai are sceptical that the new Criminal Justice Act will result in
stiffer sentences for traffickers caught with large amounts of illegal
drugs.

The new law provides for a minimum of 10 years' imprisonment for anyone
caught with drugs for supply valued at over pounds 10,000, and a maximum
sentence of life imprisonment.

And it specifically rules out early release unless the offender is a drug
addict who has reformed.

But the first person prosecuted under the act during the week received a
sentence of just seven years for smuggling cocaine worth pounds 2.5m into
Dublin airport.

Brazilian artist Maria Emilia Bilibo (32) was caught with nearly 15 kilos of
the drug hidden in picture frames in her luggage last October.

The new act says that the 10-year minimum does not apply when there are
``exceptional and specific'' circumstances, specifically if the defendant
has pleaded guilty and ``materially assisted'' the Garda investigation.

Although Ms Bilibo pleaded guilty at an early stage the Circuit Criminal
Court heard she was not in a position to provide Gardai with much
information.

Judge Dominick Lynch imposed a sentence of seven years, while saying that it
would ordinarily merit a term of 11 years. He said he based this on her
guilty plea and on existing guidelines that say foreign offenders should
receive shorter sentences. The judge also quoted Supreme Court judgements
which say offenders should be offered a ``light at the end of the tunnel''
to help with rehabilitation.

The courts have previously come in for criticism in regard to some sentences
imposed in high-profile drug cases.

Two Englishmen caught with pounds 5m worth of heroin, the biggest seizure in
the history of the state, were each sentenced to just six years'
imprisonment last May.

Gary Blake (31) and Robert Russell (33) were caught in October 1998 and
admitted making ``nine or ten'' previous heroin smuggling trips on behalf of
a west Dublin gang.

Their sentencing came at a time when the Government had signalled its wish
for 10 years to be the minimum and the DPP has now appealed the sentences
imposed on Blake and Russell.

Last month two men who were part of a gang caught with pounds 3m worth of
cannabis in Tallaght, Co Dublin, received suspended sentences. And earlier
this month two women, one from Nigeria and one from Liberia, who were caught
in Dublin airport with pounds 280,000 worth of cocaine, received sentences
of three and four years.

The new Immigration Act provides the courts with the power to deport foreign
smugglers once they have completed their sentences, and this was recommended
in the Bilibo case.

The risks of drug smuggling were revealed by the discovery last month of the
bodies of two young Dubliners near the Grand Canal in Co Dublin.

One of them, Patrick Murray (19) from Ballyfermot, had been caught with half
a kilo of heroin strapped to his body in Dublin airport off a flight from
Amsterdam. He was reportedly a cannabis dealer who owed money to a west
Dublin criminal and did the heroin run to pay off the debt.

Murray was not an addict and the amount of heroin involved would have made
him liable for 10 years in jail unless he co-operated with Gardai. But it is
understood he had not made a statement implicating anyone else, and was shot
because the gang involved had lost money. Gardai believe that because of the
exceptions in the act and the courts' preference for discretionary sentences
it is unlikely that many drug `mules' will face the 10-year minimum.

The second sentence under the new act will take place next Tuesday in the
case of South African drug smuggler Johannes Coutzee (38).He will be
sentenced in the Dublin Circuit Court for importing three kilos of cocaine
worth up to pounds 400,000.