A porter caught with 100 kilos of cocaine at work

A porter caught with 100 kilos of cocaine at work told a jury how he was forced into storing the drugs by a gang of Colombians.

Jaime Arias, 47, claimed the ruthless dealers beat him up and threatened his family.

Arias was found by police with 100 kilos of the drug at his unassuming office in south Kensington, west London.

His co-accused Brian Mills, 68, and John Velasquez-Valencia, 28, were also caught ferrying 10 kilos of the narcotic around central London.

Southwark Crown Court has heard how the trio were snared by a covert police operation on April 29 this year.

Giving evidence Arias told jurors he had been approached by the Colombians a week before his capture at De Vere Mews, South Kensington.

He told jurors he found a smartly dressed woman sitting in his office who introduced him to two men – one of them a male in his 40’s with a scar on his left cheek.

Arias said they informed him they had some ‘merchandise’ for him and led him to the nearby cafe to discuss the matter further.

‘They were very anxious at that time.

The older one said to me directly that some merchandise had been brought for me.

‘I said, ‘What kind of merchandise are you talking about?’, and he said, ‘You know what we are talking about’.

‘

‘I did not know them.

‘

He added: ‘The older one handed me over a telephone.

I said, ‘I did not need it’.

‘He said, ‘It is better for you’.

Arias told jurors how he heard a male voice speaking in Spanish on the other end.

The defendant recalled to the jury what the caller told him: ‘Look dog do what you are told.

If you do not take any notice of this we will go to your mum and cut her head off.

‘

Arias, who arrived in Britain in the early 1990’s from Colombia also, said the stranger repeated the address of his family.

The caller added that if he did not cooperate, ‘he would also throw his sister in a ditch.

‘

Arias added: ‘They talked about my mother and my sister.

They mentioned where my mother worked and that was the oddest thing,’ he said.

He added: ‘It took me by surprise.

At that time I felt disarmed because they got to a weak point in me, my family.

I was very angry.

‘

Seconds after the telephone call ended, Arias walked ‘quickly’ back to his office but was called back downstairs by the three strangers.

He said they showed him a pile of about 11 boxes piled up next to the dustbin area of the luxury flat complex.

Arias said: ‘I lost control completely and I knocked the bin over and said I could not help them.

There was no way that I could help them.

‘The younger one started hitting me.

I responded to the violence because he was hitting me very hard.

‘I was just telling them that I would not accept that situation.

‘

The older of the men broke up the fight and anded Arias the telephone to listen to the male voice repeat his threat, the court heard.

He said he then returned to his office to find a number of black bags which he had ‘never seen before’.

The drug dealers told him not to touch the ‘merchandise’ and informed him that somebody would be coming to collect a bag later.

‘I got to know more or less what they were talking about,’ Arias continued.

‘Merchandise in Colombia is cocaine.

It is like a nickname.

The people in the streets call it merchandise.

‘

He said at about lunchtime on April 22, he walked alone along Hyde Park Corner.

‘I went to the park.

I sat on a bench to think what action should I take,’ he said.

‘I thought of contacting my boss, contacting the police but I also thought of the pressure they were putting on me.

‘It was very clear to me already that I could not say anything.

‘I made a very cold decision because the decision they gave me was either life or death.

‘I know that they had put me in a suitcase, a very hard situation.

‘If a spoke, if I went to the police to complain about them, I was basically condemned.

‘

Arias was caught on April 30, 2003, after officers watched him pick up a black lap top bag and take it to his office at nearby Canning Place Mews.

He was then spotted leaving without the computer bag but instead carrying a black ruck sack.

As he walked down Gloucester Road he was stopped by police and the bag was searched.

Officers found pnds stlg 14,400 in the ruck sack which he claimed he was about to use to buy a car.

Police then searched his offices at the two blocks of flats and found the drugs stashed in a electricity cupboard at De Vere Mews and on a shelf at Canning Place Mews.

A search of Arias’ home also uncovered just under pnds stlg 60,000 in cash.

Arias, of Page Street, Pimlico, Mills, of Waynefleet Square, Notting Hill, and Velasquez-Valencia, of Shaftesbury Street, Islington, north London, all deny one charge of conspiracy to supply a controlled drug of class A.

Arias denies a second charge of conspiracy to supply a controlled drug of class A.

The trial continues.

ends