Freed drugs trafficker faces new sentence

A DRUGS trafficker who was arrested only five months after being released from an 18-year jail sentence is facing a return to prison.

Gregory Rothwell, from Manchester, was released from HMP Kirkham in May 2011 but arrested by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca) in November after organising a delivery of mephedrone.

Four other members of his crime group are facing a total of eight years’ imprisonment.

In October 2011, Soca intelligence showed that Gregory Rothwell was brokering a drugs deal with an organised crime group headed by Scottish drug dealer Francis Brennan.

Rothwell and Brennan met twice while under the surveillance of Soca and the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency.

Both men travelled more than 120 miles to rendezvous at motorway services near the Border.

They and the three other men, Paul Grimes, Dennis Andrews and Dennis O’Gara, made numerous calls to each other from public telephone kiosks in an attempt to evade law enforcement agencies. The handover was scheduled for 18 November but then delayed by 24 hours.

Once the drop-off was made, Soca arrested all five men –O’Gara with 1kg of mephedrone, Rothwell with £900 cash, his lieutenant Paul Grimes trying to throw away a mobile phone, and Andrews and Brennan with 5kg of mephedrone at a motorway services just off the M6.