EX-INMATE PLANNED TO SERVE UP DRUGS TO PRISONERS

A RECENTLY-released inmate planned to throw drug-filled tennis balls into a
jail to repay his debt to prison drug barons, a court heard yesterday.

Robert Campbell, who had been released from Perth prison just a week
earlier, stuffed the balls with heroin, cannabis, and temazepam after
threats to his girlfriend and four-year-old child.

At the High Court in Edinburgh Campbell, 28, was jailed for three years
after he admitted being concerned in the supply of the drugs in September
last year.

The court heard that Campbell, of Ainslie Place, Perth, had a lengthy
criminal record, mostly for petty offences, and that his convictions for
driving while disqualified showed that it was almost a way of life for him.

Hugh Irwin, advocate-depute, said: "In the course of his last sentence he
was supplied with heroin and developed a habit. He ran up a debt with those
who supplied him in prison."

Campbell was released on September 13 but a week later Tayside drugs squad
received a tip that he would throw drugs over the perimeter wall of the
jail, where they would be retrieved by inmates.

Police detained Campbell when he arrived by taxi. He told them: "The gear's
in my pocket."

He had a tennis ball in each pocket which had been taped up after drugs
were hidden inside.

He admitted that he had been ordered to deliver the drugs after running up
a "substantial account" in prison.

Mr Irwin said the heroin recovered had a street value of more than UKP1800
but the drugs would have had an even greater value inside the prison system.

John Hamilton, defence counsel, described his client as a "rather feckless
and stupid man" who had been using methadone but succumbed to pressure in
jail and started using heroin, selling most of his property to pay for it.