Air traveller, 73, caught trying to smuggle heroin jailed for five years

David Pryor, 73, was sentenced to five years imprisonment at Isleworth Crown Court yesterday. He had previously admitted trying to import the class A drug.

Pryor, or Priory Road, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, was arrested on September 5 last year when he arrived at Terminal 5 of London’s Heathrow airport on a flight from Tanzania in East Africa.

Customs officers found about four kilos of the drug concealed in three wicker baskets in his suitcase.

The drugs had a street value of £99,085 but Pryor had only been paid £4,520 to bring the drugs into the country, the court heard.

When he pleaded guilty to the offence in November, a spokesman for the UK Border Agency said: “When first questioned, Pryor claimed that he worked for a law firm and had been to the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam to depose a witness.

“He said the wicker baskets had been given to him as a gift by the cousin of the witness he had been to visit and that he had no idea the heroin had been hidden inside.”

Judge Anne Molyneux told Pryor he would spend five years in prison and she imposed a travel restriction order, prohibiting Pryor from leaving the UK for two years, starting from his release date.

Judge Molyneux also ordered the forfeiture and destruction of the heroin.