€200,000 drugs smuggled in dogs’ stomachs
The Labradors had 21 canisters holding more than 1kg of the drug surgically implanted inside their abdominal cavities and were used as carriers to smuggle the drugs from Colombia.
One dog had to be put down after a vet found that the canisters had fused with some of its vital organs.
Gregory Graham, aged 27, of Alexander Avenue, Harrow, north west London, and student Kaye Chapman, aged 20, of Locket Road, also Harrow, were convicted unanimously at Norwich Crown Court yesterday. As the verdicts were announced, Chapman, the mother of a little girl - who blamed Graham during the trial for duping her into joining the smuggling ring - collapsed sobbing in the dock.
The pair were arrested with two others after a sting operation at Stansted Airport last September.
Metropolitan Police officers were tipped off about the elaborate plot by vets at Amsterdam’s Schipol airport worried about the sick animals.
Their co-defendants, St Martin’s College art student Sophia McPherson, aged 24, from Poynters Avenue, Luton, and Glenroy Kentish, aged 28, of Westmill Road, Hitchin, Hertfordshire, were cleared of conspiracy to import the drug.
The dogs, a golden Labrador called Rex and a black Labrador called Frispa, arrived in Amsterdam from Colombia on September 27.
An airline official working in the cargo section checked on the animals after their long flight and found one dog weak and the other aggressive. A vet found hard objects in the abdominal cavity of one and, the court was told, the following morning X-rays revealed 11 containers hidden inside Rex and 10 in Frispa.
Judge Jacobs adjourned sentence until September 3.
