A man who lived in squalid conditions with a bed in a single kitchen and a bathroom claimed he maintained the hundreds of cannabis plants inside the building because he was being threatened. Jorgen Bami, 26, was arrested by Gwent Police officers PC David Brice and PC Amanda Williams while attempting to hide away from them in brambles at the back of the property on April 30.
At a hearing at Cardiff Crown Court on Tuesday Martha Smith-Higgins, prosecuting, told the court how Gwent Police had grown suspicious of Bami’s home address at the Citadel, Snatchwood Road, Abersychan, for a host of reasons. The site was mostly unused, had padlocks on all of the doors, was covered at a main entrance by a steel sheet and a caged security door, and the windows were all boarded up. It also stunk of cannabis from the outside, she said.
After being caught the defendant’s mobile phone and wallet were seized and the officers broke into the building. Pictures shared by the Crown Prosecution Service show the conditions that Bami lived in and the extent of the operation.
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In total 250 cannabis plants were recovered from the property amounting to between £116,000 and £147,000 while 800g of cannabis was packed and ready to be distributed to customers. Judge Recorder Paul Hobson described it as “clearly an organised and sophisticated operation”.
Bami was taken to Newport police station where he admitted playing a role in the offending but said he took part because he was in £20,000 of debt and needed to ensure the safety of his family. He told lawyers the lives of his family members had been threatened.
Bami also told his representatives he’d been taken to the Pontypool building in early March and was informed his role was to water and feed the plants. He said he didn’t leave the building in March and April.
Recorder Hobson told the court he found it hard to believe that Bami – who cannot speak English and listened to the hearing through a translator – was merely a gardener and pointed to text messages police discovered on Bami’s mobile phone which showed he offered step-by-step advice to another person on how to grow the plants.
“The prosecution cannot simply accept at face value that there has been coercion here,” Recorder Hobson said. “No basis of plea has covered an alleged threat.
“Those texts indicate a knowledge and expertise of the process that would have made him valuable to the operation. It does undercut the suggestion that he was just watering them from time to time.”
Gareth Williams, for Bami, said: “He was clearly living there. We are talking about a sink with an old kettle and a pull-out bed. You can imagine his existence in that property.”
Mr Williams said his client was a person of previous good character and that he had looked into a potential defence under the Modern Slavery Act but decided he didn’t want to pursue the defence. Recorder Hobson gave the defendant 25% credit for his delayed guilty plea but added: “This operation would only have been left with someone with considerable knowhow and that someone was you.” Bami was sentenced to 27 months, half of which will be served behind bars with the rest on licence.
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