Sian Warren, 34, and Daniel McDonald, 36, from Salford, have been accused of trying to smuggle cannabis valued at £1million through Heathrow Airport on their way back from Thailand
A couple have been charged with trying to smuggle cannabis valued at £1million into the UK after being stopped at Heathrow Airport.
Sian Warren, 34, and Daniel McDonald, 36, were on their way back from Thailand when officers from the National Crime Agency reportedly found more than 51kg of cannabis in their luggage. It is understood that the drug was in four cases that the pair were carrying. They appeared at Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court where they have been charged with importing Class B drugs and have been bailed under curfew ahead of a plea hearing on June 26 at Isleworth Crown Court.
Warren and McDonald, from Salford, went to Bangkok on holiday last month and Warren’s dad Tony told The Sun that there must have been a mistake.
He said: “Sian’s not brought anything back, definitely not. She had her own suitcase with clothes in it.”
It is the latest of several incidents involving British holidaymakers who have been accused of smuggling drugs from Thailand as an expert warned that criminal gangs are “grooming” naive tourists.
In the last few weeks, three British women have hit the headlines after they were accused of attempting to smuggle drugs. Bella May Cullen, 18, was arrested after flying into Georgia from Thailand with around 14kg of cannabis and 2kg of hashish in her luggage.
A day later former TUI stewardess Charlotte May Lee was allegedly caught with 46kg of Kush – a high-grade strain of cannabis – in her luggage valued at £1.2million after arriving in Sri Lanka, again from Thailand. And then it emerged another Brit, Isabella Daggett, 21, from Leeds, has been held in a hellhole Dubai prison since March, when she was arrested on suspected drugs offences.
Nathan Paul Southern, the Operations Director at The EyeWitness Project, which specialises in the investigation of organised crime, conflict and corruption, says southeast Asia has now become the world’s leading supplier of both narcotics like heroin and synthetic drugs like ecstasy and crystal meth.
The ‘Golden Triangle’ – a large mountainous region on the borders with Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, recently overtook Afghanistan as the world’s largest producer of opium, used to make heroin. And he says gangs are “flocking” to the region from around the world, where they appear to be using grooming techniques used in other types of crimes to ensnare impressionable young Westerners.
Mr Southern told the Mirror: “The idea of charming strangers grooming backpackers isn’t new, it’s just the same old tactics in a region with a booming drug trade. The same grooming techniques we’ve seen in romance scams and human trafficking could be getting adapted for drug smuggling.