THE system of issuing passports in Britain is wide open to abuse, a Circuit Court judge said yesterday as it emerged that a man out on parole for murder could get a false passport and travel to Ireland to take part in drug smuggling.

The prosecution in the €440m cocaine trial was attacked as speculative, remote, fixated and incorrect as lawyers for two of the defendants made their closing submissions to the jury today.

TWO men on trial over Ireland’s biggest-ever drugs seizure were arrested after a garda found the pair walking among cattle on a west Cork country road, a court heard yesterday.