A former CIE bus driver has been given a ten-year sentence for soliciting two undercover gardaí to import cocaine from Brazil.
Sunny Idah (39) was caught following an international police operation involving Swiss and Irish undercover police.
He was secretly recorded offering the two gardaí money to swallow a kilogram each of cocaine pellets and bring them back from Brazil to Ireland.
Idah, a Nigerian with addresses at Lipton Court, Dublin City Centre and Gerard House, Brown Street in London pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to soliciting another person to unlawfully import cocaine on dates between September 14 and 19, 2010.
The plea came a week after his trial began last October and following a number of applications by his legal team.
Judge Catherine Murphy today imposed a ten year sentence and suspended the final year. She backdated the sentence to September 2010 when Idah went into custody.
She described it as a sophisticated operation and noted the impact the drugs would have had on users and addicts in this jurisdiction if it had been successful.
The maximum sentence for this offence is fourteen years imprisonment.
Idah was previously sentenced to 13 years imprisonment for this and another drug trafficking offence. This conviction was overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeal after that court ruled that one of the secret recordings made by gardaí did not meet the level of authorisation required.
Colm O'Briain BL, prosecuting, said that Idah's importation operation was complex and part of a “well planned out international operation which took some time to organise.”
Emails from a Yahoo email address showed Idah, using the name Mr T or Teemore, looking to recruit drug mules from a Swiss undercover operative, posing as a known Lithuanian drug dealer.
Detective Garda Brian Roberts told Mr O'Briain that Idah offered €5,000 each to undercover gardaí to travel to Brazil, swallow cocaine worth €140,000 and smuggle it back to Ireland.
Gardaí used hidden audio devices to record conversations between Idah and gardaí posing as two Polish nationals offering their services as drug mules.
Idah asked each of the would-be drug mules to swallow 1kg of cocaine, with an estimated street value of €70,000, in the form of 100 one gramme pellets of compressed cocaine.
Idah had given the two men €400 in cash to pay for a hotel room in Dublin and $1,000 American dollars and flight tickets on the day they were due to depart for Brazil. They never travelled and Idah was arrested the same day.
The court heard that Idah had lived here for ten years and has dual Irish and Nigerian citizenship. He worked as a bus driver for CIE in Galway for four years and has two children with an Irish woman and a third with a Chinese national.
Idah has two previous convictions, one for a public order offence and another for larceny.
Noel McCarthy SC, defending, said Idah has no relevant record for a similar offence and that there was no suggestion of violence as a feature.
'The crime he committed has had a major and devastating impact on his young son and his partner and there is no evidence that he presents a risk to the public,” said Mr McCarthy.
He said Idah has expressed his deep sense of remorse for getting involved and added: “He wants this enterprise put behind him. His happiest days were when he was driving a bus for CIE but he didn't realise this then.”
He explained that Idah, who has been in custody for four years, had become friendly with people from Nigeria and was asked to get involved in the enterprise.
“However, those so-called friends have not been very supportive over the past four years.”
