TWO English nationals in their 60s were described by Judge Joseph Mathews as "mere puppets on a string" for an Irish drugs organisation when he imposed suspended sentences of 10 years on each of them.
Brian Pashley (63), a former soccer professional and bar manager, and Marion Hillman (61) have lived in Spain for about 30 years where they were offered cash to take cannabis resin worth £300,000 to Dublin.
Pashley, of Edificio Aries, Pasaje Pazerro, and Hillman, of Tras La Iglesia, both Torremolinos, pleaded guilty to unlawful importation of cannabis resin at Dublin Airport on February 2nd, 1997.
Det Garda Christopher Elliott yesterday told Mr Eamonn Leahy, prosecuting, both were contacted separately by a 30 year old Irish man they knew to see called "Freddie" about the operation. Pashley knew he was a drugs organiser.
Neither knew about the other although they were given tickets to travel on the same flight from Malaga. Their luggage was intercepted by Customs officers when they arrived at Dublin Airport and the cannabis was found. Both cooperated when arrested and the gardai accepted their statements as being truthful.
Det Garda Elliott said each of them was in financial trouble when targeted by an Irish drugs organiser.
He agreed with Mr Leahy that drugs cartels were prepared to sacrifice couriers on the same flight, especially if interception acted as a decoy to allow other couriers through.
Mr Michael O'Higgins, defending, said Pashley worked in the Portsmouth Naval Dockyard and learned a trade before his British army national service. He went back to the dockyard as a civil servant after his army time and later played professional soccer for Guildford before moving to Spain in 1970.
He successfully ran bars called the Duke of Wellington and the" Three Barrels, but when business declined he lost all his money. Pashley owed money on an apartment he shared with his partner and their three children at the time he was recruited as a courier.
Mr O'Higgins said Det Garda Elliott had agreed Pashley had no previous convictions and there was no chance of him reoffending.
Mr George Birmingham said Hillman had "a sad and pathetic background". When her mother was pregnant with her the mother discovered Hillman's father was already married with a family. She was reared by a grandmother until her mother married again. Her stepfather's work with the then British War Office moved them around the world.
Judge Mathews agreed he was, entitled to take into consideration the ruling of the Court of Criminal Appeal concerning foreign prisoners in Irish jails, their ages and their guilty pleas. He had to mark the seriousness of the crime by imposing a lengthy sentence, but would suspend it.