Smugglers jailed for Caribbean drugs plot

A five-man gang of drug traffickers was jailed for a total of 99 years yesterday for trying to smuggle £90m worth of cocaine into Britain.

They were arrested while unloading 396kg (873lb) of cocaine – a record haul of the drug – in the Isle of Wight, having sailed the cargo from a Caribbean island.

The transatlantic voyage on a 37ft yacht took a gruelling 32 days in September and October 2000. But after reaching the Isle of Wight, the carefully planned operation descended into farce because of the weather.

Yesterday the gang members were given prison sentences at Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London ranging from 13 to 26 years.

Customs intelligence officers suspected that Michael Tyrrell, 55, was planning something in July 2000, and a joint investigation – Operation Eyefull – was set up with the National Crime Squad. Every move Tyrrell made was watched.

Tyrrell planned to land 20 bales of drugs, which came from drug cartels in Venezuela and Colombia, at his private beach in Orchard Bay, near Ventnor, next to his house.

The voyage began in September 2000 after the drugs shipment was picked up from the island of Bequia, near St Vincent. The yacht, Blue Hen, arrived off the Isle of Wight on 23 October, but bad weather set in as the drugs were being ferried ashore in a dinghy.

The dinghy's engine failed and the craft was forced to land at a different beach. Tyrrell and his accomplices spent hours transferring their cargo along a treacherous clifftop path at night. It left them wet, cold, miserable and exhausted.

Customs officers, who had been tracking the gang on every step of their journey, then moved in and seized the drugs and four of the smugglers. The final gang member was found the next day hiding in woods.

Tyrrell, who has three children and called himself the "first white Rastafarian of Antigua" after the island where he grew up, was said to be so "arrogant" he never imagined being caught.

Judge Timothy King told the five smugglers at the end of their six-month-long trial: "Those who involve themselves in the trafficking of hard and addictive drugs such as cocaine are nothing less than the purveyors of misery, degradation and death."

He went on: "The likes of you are a blight, a cancer within such societies, and in this instance our society in the United Kingdom."

Sentencing Tyrrell to 26 years, the judge told him it was obvious he was the operation's "overlord".

"You were the boss, the governor, the man at the very top of this organisation, the man to whom others looked for orders and instruction. This was your brainchild, your scheme."

Tyrrell had claimed he became involved in the plot because a Colombian drugs baron threatened to murder his mother if he did not obey orders.

The judge described Tyrrell as "a vain, self-interested, arrogant, greedy, manipulative and ruthless man".

Tyrrell, who was born in Britain but settled in Antigua with his parents as a child, has four houses and several cars on the island. In 1996 he moved his family to Britain and bought a £900,000 house at Brook, Hampshire. Three years later he purchased Orchard Bay House in the Isle of Wight, for £657,000. The house had been built 150 years ago as a base in the battle against smugglers.

Tyrrell's right-hand man, Robert Kavanagh, the American owner of a $2m hideaway on the Caribbean island of St Barts, was jailed for 24 years. He used his contacts with the drug cartels of Venezuela and Colombia to arrange the supply of cocaine.

The next to be jailed was a Colombian boat builder and sailor, German Henao, 48, the only one to admit the smuggling charge. He was given 13 years.

Didier Le Brun, 49, from Florida, who skippered the vessel, and his other crew member, Laurent Penchef, 32, a dual American-French citizen, were each sentenced to 18 years.

Kavanagh and Henao were recommended for deportation.