MAN FOUND NOT GUILTY OF CONTROLLING DRUGS PLOT

A MAN was cleared yesterday of masterminding a scheme to recycle drugs - 24
hours after his ten-year-old daughter gave evidence against him in court.

A jury at the High Court in Edinburgh returned not guilty verdicts on
charges which alleged that the man had been concerned in the supplying of
heroin, morphine, diazepam and temazepam between 1994 and 1996.

However, the man, whom The Scotsman is not naming in order to protect his
daughter's identity, was convicted of a separate offence of possessing a
sawn-off shotgun and was jailed for two years.

The 39-year-old, from Glenrothes, Fife, who has previous convictions for
drugs offences and assault, said he had been asked to store the weapon for
friends.

At a previous court hearing, the man's former wife, aged 37, was jailed for
two years. The woman served 12 months of the sentence and is now living
with her daughter and son in the Fife area.

The woman's former lover, Thomas Slater, 51, who ran Clinical Waste
Services, of Glenrothes, is serving a six-year sentence for drugs supplying
offences. The drugs had been collected as unwanted or unused from
pharmacies, doctors' surgeries and nursing homes by Slater's firm and
should have been incinerated. Instead, they were passed to dealers and sold
on the streets in Fife.

It was alleged that the man had been behind the scheme and had threatened
his former wife and Slater into becoming his "puppets".

However, Derek Ogg, the accused man's counsel, told the jury that far from
being an evil criminal mastermind, the man had been set up by his former
wife and Slater. They had wanted to put the blame on him for their valuable
operation.

Mr Ogg said that the man lived in near poverty and that police had found
nothing to connect him with drugs when his home was searched.

On Wednesday, the man's daughter told the jury that her father was a drugs
dealer who had threatened to shoot her and her brother if her mother
refused to sell drugs.

Clutching her favourite teddy bear, called Custard, she told the court: "He
told my mum to sell drugs. I heard him say he would shoot me and Matthew
[her brother] or gran and grandad or even her."

Referring to the daughter's evidence, Mr Ogg said she was talking about
events when she was aged five or six. After her parents' acrimonious split,
the mother had brought about an alienation between father and daughter.

Mr Ogg suggested: "It may be the child has taken a side, or been given a
side to take." He added that the claim of the man threatening to shoot the
mother and daughter was just the kind of excuse the mother would have
needed to explain her involvement in the drugs offences to her family.

The child's mother, who is now working as a care assistant at an old
people's home, was arrested on 15 October, 1996 after police were tipped
off that she was due to hand over a consignment of drugs.

A police surveillance team witnessed the exchange and arrested the woman
and Alexander Ovenstone, 34, of Methil, who was sentenced to four years in
prison.

At the time of the woman's arrest her daughter told police: "It isn't her
they should get, it is my dad."

The court had heard how the woman had once given her daughter a parcel
containing drugs to hide in a pram with her doll. The girl told the court:
"My mum told me to put it in the doll's pram so no-one would see it."

Slater was arrested on 17 October, 1996, by police in Yorkshire as he and
his family returned from a holiday at Disneyland Paris. He was later
divorced by his wife.

Slater later admitted to police that the operation had been going on since
1994 and that he handed over drugs to the woman on a weekly basis to pass
on to Ovenstone.

Police had been aware of a high level of pharmaceutical drugs circulation
and set up Operation Incineration which targeted Slater's business as the
source.

Checked-by: Pat Dolan