Soldier jailed for five years after using his barracks for drug delivery

A SOLDIER who used his barracks as a cover for a drug dealing operation was jailed for five years yesterday.

Osita Omenyima, 35, a university graduate who joined the British army when he moved to Edinburgh, was sent a package of cocaine worth £50,000 hidden inside highlighter pens by a relative in South America.

The package was intercepted and Omenyima, a Nigerian national, was caught by an undercover police operation at Redford Barracks in Edinburgh, where he was serving in the Rifles Regiment, badge pictured right.

Rifleman Omenyima was told by a judge at the High Court in Edinburgh that it had been a commercial operation.

“There would appear to be no motive other than financial gain.

Lord Malcolm said: “Your involvement was revealed thanks to the dedication and careful work of drugs squad police officers and UK Border Agency officials. It is clear you are an intelligent and well-qualified person. Since arriving in the UK you have done well in your chosen career in the armed forces and your wife has recently given birth to a child.

“However, you have thrown all this away by your deliberate involvement in an illegal trade which causes misery to the ultimate users, their families and to society in general.”

Border Agency officials were suspicious of a package, addressed to Omenyima at Redford Barracks, when it arrived at Coventry Airport from a cousin in Caracas, Venezuela.

It contained three books, pamphlets, a prayer written on a piece of paper, and three plastic boxes filled with 38 highlighter pens.

Some of the pens were leaking and officials discovered they had 30 per cent pure cocaine hidden in them.

The Border Agency, along with the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, launched an undercover operation to catch Omenyima.

A policeman posed as a delivery driver and handed over the package on 3 September last year while another eight officers carried out covert surveillance.

When Omenyima realised that he had been trapped, he began sweating and looked agitated. He ran off through the barracks parade ground, pursued by the police, and threw the package away, but he was caught and arrested. Omenyima was convicted of being concerned in the supplying of cocaine.

The advocate-depute Gillian More, said: “He used the army to conduct this drug dealing operation. He used his position in the army as a front.”

The defence solicitor-advocate, Richard Goddard, said Omenyima claimed he had no idea what was in the parcel which had been sent to him. He said: “Mr Omenyima’s position is that he has been exploited and used as a fall guy.”

Omenyima came from a farming family of “well-regarded and law-abiding people” and, through a scholarship, had obtained a degree in accounting in Nigeria.

In 2008, he came to the UK to study for a masters degree at London Metropolitan University, but then decided to join the army.

Mr Goddard said Omenyima had 15-year-old twin sons from an earlier relationship and did his best to support them by sending money back to Nigeria. He married in 2009 and his wife had a son five weeks ago.

“The future for them is clearly uncertain, to say the least. There is no doubt the consequences of this conviction will be far-reaching for him and others,” said Mr Goddard.