A drug mule who had £120,000 of cannabis in suitcases fessed up to airport security as he touched down from Thailand.
When asked by Border Force officers at Manchester Airport, Jordan Brook replied: ‘I’ll be honest, I’ve got weed… no point in lying.’
The 31-year-old arrived from Bangkok early on a Thursday morning, Manchester Evening News reported.
He had been stopped by Border Force officers before leaving the terminal.
The officers discovered Brook had attempted to smuggle in more than £100,000 worth of cannabis.
At Manchester Crown Court his lawyer said Brook did not know what would happen once he landed in the UK.
Michael James, defending, said the father-of-two was relieved to have been stopped.
Sacha Waxman, prosecuting, said Brook had arrived at the airport at 7.20am on April 17 after flying from Bangkok via Bahrain.
Brook, of Eccles, Salford, told officials he had no idea what his baggage looked like, despite checking it in.
He also claimed he did not know the PIN code to open the suitcases.
Two suitcases with the defendant’s name were retrieved from the carousel.
Between both cases there was 89lb (40.5kg) of cannabis, which was estimated to be worth £121,000.
Brook replied ‘no comment’ when interviewed by police, but when asked whether he was a victim of duress or modern slavery, he replied ‘definitely not’.
Brook claimed he was ‘pressured’ to return to the UK, but said it was not duress.
Mr James told the court: ‘He expresses a sense of relief that he was stopped, because he didn’t really know what was going to happen, who he was going to meet, on the other side of the customs barrier.’
Brook, who appeared in court via video link from HMP Altcourse in Merseyside, had spent 59 days on remand prior to the sentencing hearing.
Mr James asked the judge to pass a suspended sentence, to allow for the defendant’s release from jail.
Mr James said Brook wanted to be reunited with his children. He told the court that the defendant was affected by the death of his father when he was young and had struggled behind bars without medication for his social anxiety.
Judge William Waldron KC said: ‘The courts simply cannot and will not tolerate the importation of drugs into this country, via Bangkok or anywhere else.’
Brook pleaded guilty to one count of being concerned in the fraudulent evasion of a prohibition on the importation of a class B drug.
He was sentenced to 18 months and told he would serve 40 per cent of the term behind bars before being released on licence.
