'Bungling Biggles' jailed for smuggling £22m of cocaine

A former air cargo company director who was the target of one of the most notorious animal rights protests of recent times was jailed yesterday for 20 years for attempting to smuggle £22m worth of cocaine into the country.

Christopher Barrett-Jolley, 54, described by a senior Customs chief as a "bungling Biggles", shared £1m to collect the cocaine from Jamaican dealers in October last year.

Yesterday, the veteran gun-runner was found guilty with his co-pilot and brother-in-law, Peter Carine, 50, who also received 20 years at Basildon Crown Court in Essex.

Judge Zoe Smith recommended that the pair serve at least two thirds of their sentences. She told the men: "I take the view that you were equal parties in planning and effecting that importation and you had no regard as to the grave consequences to society generally and to the ultimate consumers of this drug."

Two other men accused of being involved in the plot – Martin Lake, a flight engineer aged 61, from Storrington, West Sussex, and [name temporarily removed], 42, of Great Warford, Cheshire, who was said to have financed the operation – were both found not guilty.

Barrett-Jolley achieved notoriety in 1994 as a director of Phoenix Aviation, which specialised in the exportation of live calves for veal from Baginton airport, Coventry. At the height of the protests, a local animal rights activist, Jill Phipps, was run over by a lorry delivering calves to the airport. In 1996, Phoenix Aviation went into liquidation.

In 1974, he admitted being involved in arms-dealing for 20 years. One of his missions was to transport more than 180 tonnes of weapons from Bulgaria to Yemen. He also delivered 44 tonnes of arms from Vishkek in the former Soviet Union to the Angolan capital, Luanda. He said at the time: "I'm not a gun-runner. I'm just the driver."

Barrett-Jolley and Carine were arrested when the huge cache was seized at Southend airport in Essex by Customs officers operating on a tip-off from a Serbian soldier.

Five suitcases and a holdall containing the drug, destined for gangs in Manchester, were carefully dropped onto the asphalt from a hatch behind the cockpit of a Nigerian-owned 707 cargo plane. On board were Barrett-Jolley, Mr Lake, Nikolai Luzaic, who provided security, and David Ogundipe, a representative of the Koda Air flight company, who was drugged to prevent him interfering with the operation.

Mr Luzaic was to become a star witness. He contacted Customs in Britain via his solicitors on 12 October. Later that day, he spoke to Customs officers from the Holiday Inn in Montego Bay, Jamaica, telling them that a huge cocaine importation was under way. The crew had to stay for three days on the Caribbean island while the drugs were delivered.

At 3.45pm on 16 October, he telephoned Customs again, this time from Las Palmas in Gran Canaria, saying the flight was going to land at Southend.

Customs believe gangsters were supposed to be waiting in a nearby cemetery to pick up the drugs, but were scared off when officers went onto the runway to check the suitcases. As soon as the Boeing arrived, the crew were arrested.

Barrett-Jolley and Carine claimed the reason for the stop-off in Montego Bay was to pick up some "security documents" on behalf of the US Central Intelligence Agency. They said they were working for "Air America", an airline set up by the CIA in the 1960s during the Vietnam War, which closed down in 1975. The drug-runners had fake Air America passes.

A Customs and Excise spokesman said yesterday: "The arrest and conviction of these men, whose audacious attempt to smuggle over a quarter of tonne of cocaine into the United Kingdom was foiled, stopped not only these drugs getting on to the streets of the UK but has also removed a highly organised transport team and their financier."