FIVE YEARS FOR TRAVELLER 'SET UP BY BOLIVIAN DRUG GANG'

A FORMER Guardsman, who was awarded the Military Cross in Bosnia, has been
jailed for five years and four months in Bolivia after being convicted of
drug smuggling.

Darren Waterhouse, a former colour sergeant in the Coldstream Guards, was
informed of his sentence at the Palmazola prison at Santa Cruz. He has
spent 18 months in custody and has paid nearly UKP1,000 for his own cell.

Waterhouse, 32, from Weybridge, Surrey, claims that he was set up by drug
smugglers. He maintained that he knew nothing about a kilo of cocaine,
worth UKP30,000, found in a toilet bag in his luggage as he was about to
fly to Miami on his way to Britain in June 1997. He won the Military Cross
in May 1995 when Serbs ambushed his patrol in the former Yugoslavia.

He said: "My luggage was left in the care of the hotel for six hours. It
was then that these types went into action. They opened the case and
switched my toilet bag. The cocaine was hidden in tubes of shaving cream."