Cocaine dealer's jail term cut

A KEY figure in a major cocaine trafficking operation in Edinburgh won an appeal yesterday and had three years taken off his ten-year jail term.

Mark Richardson, 23, was caught when police raided a "crack" cocaine factory in a flat in the Ferniehill area of the city.

He and an accomplice were concentrating so much on producing the highly addictive drug that they did not notice detectives sneaking into the kitchen to detain them.

Appeal judges said Richardson, of Cumnor Crescent, Inch, Edinburgh, was not a minor player but, equally, he was not one of the gang's top men, and a ten-year sentence had been excessive.

It was not Richardson's first drug-dealing offence. As a teenager, he was given a sentence of 32 months' detention and his father was jailed for four and a half years for supplying cocaine.

Richardson had been accused of assaulting the Celtic and Scotland footballer Scott Brown, by punching him in the head, and of attending an organised dog fight, but both cases were dropped at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on the eve of his appearance in the High Court in July last year on the latest drugs charge.

He admitted being concerned in the supplying of cocaine between 21 April and 9 December, 2009.