Jet ski drug smugglers jailed for total of 14 years

Two drug smugglers who tried to cross the North Sea from Holland on a jet ski with £200,000 of cocaine before running out of fuel and being rescued by helicopter, have been jailed for a total of 14 years.

The two had taken the watercraft from the Lowestoft area of Suffolk to a pick-up point in the Netherlands to collect the drugs, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

According to the Daily Mail on the return journey on September 30 last year, the pair approached a survey vessel and asked the crew for some fuel – but that request was refused.

“At one point they were pitched into the sea,” said Prosecutor Hugh Vass, adding that one man was showing signs of hypothermia and the other of exhaustion.

The Lowestoft RNLI Lifeboat and the HM Coastguard helicopter from Hull helped rescue the men, who were airlifted to hospital in Gorleston in Norfolk.

Crew from the helicopter alerted police after becoming suspicious of the men’s behaviour and they were arrested on arrival, Vass said.

He said that Brogan claimed to officers that he had been ‘fishing by jet ski but ran into difficulty when they ran out of fuel’.

The men had two kilos of cocaine in a backpack, valued at up to £200,000.

Both men admitted to importing class A drugs.