LORRY MEN PLEAD FOR EARLY RELEASE

Enid Blyton and Edgar Allan Poe have been the unlikely companions of two
British lorry drivers in a chilly jail in Sofia, Bulgaria, for nearly four
years. For John Mills and Peter Hobbs, books by the two authors, and a few
other books sent in to them, represent their main escape route.

Now they are pinning their hopes on the possibility next month of remission
of their sentences, while calls are being made for a Europe-wide
investigation into the growing number of lorry drivers jailed after drugs
are found in their vehicles. Many of the drivers, who now take up a whole
wing in one English prison, claim they are innocent dupes of drug
traffickers.

This week Stephen Jakobi, of Fair Trials Abroad, is to ask the European
Transport Commissioner, Neil Kinnock, to investigate. He says a growing
number of British drivers are languishing in EU jails, and from Bulgaria to
Morocco, often with very little evidence against them.

The men, from Enfield, north London, and both 44, were stopped at a
Bulgarian customs post in June 1995 on their return trip from delivering
spare car parts to Istanbul. In an unlocked outer compartment of the lorry
was 20 kilos of heroin worth about UKP600,000, for which they were jailed
for seven and a half years and fined UKP1,500. They both claim that they
knew nothing of the heroin. They believed then that smugglers might have
placed the drug in the lorry and planned to remove it in western Europe.
They now believe that it was planted by Turkish traffickers, who then tipped
off the Bulgarian customs so that a much larger load would have a clear
passage.

'We've found out that we were set up,' says Mills. 'We've done three years
and eight months for nothing but the prosecution has a 100 per cent success
rate here.'

The Bulgarian authorities say they have a serious problem with the the
Balkan route, via which about 80 per cent of the heroin bound for the UK now
arrives. They are unwilling to accept the word of the drivers that they knew
nothing.

Both have lost about four stone and say they are unable to eat much of the
prison food. Drying their clothes in the winter can take two weeks and they
say that they find it hard to sleep because of the cold.

'If we had to stay here another five years, we'd be dead,' says Mills,
sitting in the office of the deputy head of the prison, Plamen Kostadinov,
with a couple of Bulgarian social workers in attendance. They say that they
have not suffered any violence and that the social workers have been good to
them but they long to go home.

There are 180 foreign prisoners in the jail, including Turks, Belorussians,
Yugoslavs and Albanians. They share a cell with a Vietnamese man who has
served 10 years of a murder sentence.

Now they are applying for release, having served half their sentences, a
remission which can be granted by the Bulgarian authorities. Mills has two
teenage children. 'What am I looking forward to?' says Hobbs. 'I miss a
bath, a toilet with a seat, which might seem funny to you, a couple of

pints of beer and watching television and knowing what the people are
saying.' In the meantime they are also seeking someone other than Ms Blyton
and Mr Poe. 'But please nothing by Mills and Boon,' says Mills.

Mr Jakobi, who has visited the men, says that he finds it hard to believe
that they would have hidden the drugs in such an obvious place and have
attempted to smuggle drugs through in an empty lorry rather than hidden in
produce.

He believes that they may well be victims of drug traffickers. 'We are
satisfied that there has been a gross miscarriage of justice in this case.'

The one minor consolation is that because of inflation their original fine
of UKP1,500 will now cost them only UKP54.42.