Man jailed after failed attempt to smuggle estimated £1m worth of cocaine
A 29-year-old man has been jailed after a failed attempt to smuggle 10kg of cocaine into the UK from a shipping container.
Irnti Rapai from Liddon Road, Bromley, appeared at Maidstone Crown Court yesterday for sentencing, he was jailed for six years and seven months.
Rapai had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply Class A drugs at an earlier court hearing.
On the evening of 11 February 2023, National Crime Agency (NCA) officers watched three men, including Rapai, exit a Sheerness barber shop carrying extendable ladders.
Rapai was joined by Salih Saruhan, 32, of Broadway, Sheerness, Sean Bourke, 35, of Minster Road, Sheerness.
Officers tracked the three men walking along the seafront to the town’s port, before Rapai broke off and took up his position as a lookout near the shore.
Suruham and Bourke scaled the port’s fencing using the ladders and made their way to a number of refrigerated shipping containers that had arrived from Costa Rica earlier that day.
The pair then climbed a maintenance gantry and removed the hatch on one of the containers’ refrigeration units.
Border Force officers, who were awaiting their arrival, quickly closed in and they both fled across the port’s grounds before being detained. Suruhan was found to have bolts in his pocket, which were later matched to the container’s hatch.
NCA officers arrested Rapai outside the port in a supermarket car park, just a few hundred yards from his lookout spot.
Officers recovered individually wrapped blocks of cocaine from the container, weighing a combined 10 kilos – the crime agency estimated the street value of the drugs would have been up to £1m.
Adam Berry, NCA senior investigating officer, said: “Had Saruhan, Bourke, and Rapai been successful in their operation, the cocaine they smuggled in would have had a destructive impact on our communities.
“Drugs are closely linked to serious violence throughout the supply chain, as well as firearm and knife crime.
“The sentences passed down to them should serve as a stark warning to anyone attempting to import drugs onto UK soil.”
Pictured top: Irnti Rapai (Picture: NCA)
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