Teenagers jailed in Ghana for carrying drugs

[0utrider]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.../wghana123.xml

Two London teenagers were today sentenced to a year in a Ghanaian prison for attempting to smuggle cocaine into Britain.
Yasemin Vatansever and Yatunde Diya, who are both 16, were arrested trying to carry 6kg of the drug onto a British Airways flight bound for Heathrow in July.
Accra’s juvenile court found them guilty in November. They had faced a sentence of up to three years.
They are likely to be freed as soon as April because Ghanaian law counts time served while on trial against a sentence.
“Both sides are satisfied with the trial,” prosecution lawyer Evelyn Keelson told Reuters.
“The message is clear. When you are caught with narcotics, the law will deal with you and that is what we want society to know.”
Ghana has become a key transit point for South Amercian cocaine heading for Europe after a successful British Customs operation stamped out the usual route via the West Indies.
“Cases such as these should be a warning to anyone that drugs destroy lives, whether you are a user or a trafficker you are gambling with your life if you meddle in the drug trade,” said Tony Walker, head of the Customs’s Operation Westbridge, which focuses on West Africa.
“The use of such young people in smuggling drugs demonstrates the ruthless nature of those criminal gangs involved in the illegal narcotics trade and the misery they cause.”
Several Britons have been arrested by the authorities in Accra attempting to smuggle drugs to London in the last two years.