Three years for Spanish footballer who smuggled cocaine

A Spanish footballer who smuggled cocaine into Ireland in his runners has been jailed for three and a half years at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

Juan Camacho (aged 24), a truck driver and part-time professional footballer, was caught at Dublin Airport with €21,500 worth of the drug. He said had been paid by a man he met in Barcelona to bring the drugs into Ireland.

Garda Brian Kelly told Fergal Foley BL, prosecuting, that Camacho was stopped and searched by customs officers after arriving on a flight from Madrid. They found the cocaine hidden in packages in his runners.

He was arrested and interviewed in Santry Garda Station where he accepted the drugs were his but refused to admit they were for selling.

Gda Kelly said Camacho, of no fixed abode, had no previous convictions here or in Spain and was not known to either police force. He said he was not a "player" and had agreed to smuggle the drugs to pay back a debt he and his mother had accumulated after remortgaging their house.

He pleaded guilty to possession of drugs for sale or supple on June 25, 2008.

Isobel Kennedy SC, defending, said Camacho had left school at 16 and studied computers before joining the Spanish army and serving a tour of duty in Bosnia. He then got a job driving lorries and occasionally school buses and played football professionally for a small club.

He has spent the last year in custody and said while in prison he has seen the damage drugs can do and claims this has given him some insight into his crime.

Ms Kennedy handed in a letter from a Dublin priest saying Camacho showed "very genuine regret and remorse fo his actions".

Judge Martin Nolan said because of his early guilty plea and previous good record he would not impose the mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years.