A York drug smuggler has been jailed for four-and-a-half years after undercover customs officers caught him in bed at the end of a £158,000 cannabis run.

Colin Yarrow is led from York Crown Court after being jailed for four-and-a-half years for drugs offences.

Colin Yarrow thought he had fooled Dover Customs when he and passenger Paul Andrew Wray arrived in England in a camper van with a hidden stash of 46 kilos of cannabis worth £158,000.

They told officers they had been on a fishing holiday in France during the World Cup, York Crown Court heard.

But prosecutor Mushtaq Khokhar, prosecuting, said detectives were secretly watching their every move, and followed the van all the way to Yarrow's front door in the Leeman Road area of York.

Yarrow, aged 35, pleaded guilty to smuggling cannabis.

Co-accused Paul Wray, aged 36, of Eldon Terrace, The Groves, York, denied smuggling cannabis but pleaded guilty to possessing 6.7 grammes of the drug found in his house. He got a 12-month conditional discharge and the smuggling charge was left on file.

Recorder Kerry MacGill told Yarrow, who does not use drugs himself: "You chose to involve yourself with your eyes open in the importation of a substantial amount of cannabis."

Although he had no previous drugs convictions, he had served four and a half years for robbery in 1992 and had behaved as a professional criminal when interviewed.

Mr Khokhar said the pair left England on June 5 in the camper which Yarrow had bought a few weeks earlier with his brother.

Yarrow denied buying the camper specifically for the run or making the compartment where the drug was found.

On June 14, almost certainly after visiting Spain, the camper returned via Calais.

Mr Khokhar alleged the pair had deliberately bought separate tickets for each trip across the Channel to deceive customs officers. This was denied by Yarrow.

On the journey north, both men made phone calls and the camper arrived in York at 1.15am on Monday June 15.

Later the same day, Yarrow was arrested in bed in his girlfriend's mother's house next door to his own home.

For Yarrow, Tom Storey said he had been very careful to conceal the real reason for the French trip from Wray.

The father of a small baby, Yarrow had succumbed to a moment's temptation and had only acted as a courier for another person.

Because of his arrest, he had been unable to hand the cannabis on or receive his £1,500 "pay".

see COMMENT 'Stamp out drugs'

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.