Spaniard, Pole jailed for drug trafficking

Judge Edwina Grima has handed down harsh sentences to two foreign men who admitted to importing considerable amounts of hard drugs to Malta.

In separate judgments published today, Josè Manuel Domingo Benito, from Spain, and Edward Arthur Story, from Poland, were sentenced to imprisonment for 10 and nine years respectively after being found guilty of drug trafficking.

Benito had been arrested in October 2012 after police had raided his St Julian's hotel room and found a “heavy but empty suitcase” containing just over a kilo of cocaine, worth almost €87,000. A jar of tobacco mixed with marijuana was also recovered by the police.

Edward Arthur Story was arrested at Malta International Airport in 2012 on suspicion that he was carrying drugs. The man was found to have ingested 88 capsules of heroin in a Rotterdam apartment, before travelling to Dusseldorf and flying to Malta.

Story was jailed for nine years and fined €23,000 after he admitted to complicity in trafficking nearly 860g of heroin with a street value of almost €63,000, in May 2012.

Had the men not admitted, they would have been tried by a jury and faced a possible life sentence.