Drug smuggling grandmother sentenced to eight years in prison

Saturday, January 17, 2004

LONDON, England (AFP): A British court sentenced a wheelchair-bound grandmother on Friday to eight years in prison for masterminding a major drug smuggling operation between Jamaica and Britain.

Eileen Cresswell, 63, a former post office worker, was found guilty of recruiting in 1997 a group of couriers who once in Jamaica would take delivery of the cocaine from Cresswell's contacts and hide it in cavities in their shoes. 

In 1998, an accomplice informed on the gang's activities and police arrested several people, including Cresswell, who has two children and eight grandchildren.

Cresswell jumped bail before giving herself up to police in March 2002.

In court, the judge told Cresswell -- who has suffered two strokes and a heart attack and has leukemia -- that he had taken account of her poor health when imposing the eight-year sentence.

But the importation of drugs, he said, was a "dirty business bringing untold misery and degradation" to users. 

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