A man in England who used his own unwitting wife as a drug mule to smuggle more than $700,000 worth of heroin into the UK has been jailed for eight years, authorities said.
Cab driver Waseem Anwar Choudry, 31, packed unsuspecting Nazreen Anwar's luggage with 7.7 pounds of the illegal narcotics before she traveled from Islamabad, Pakistan, to Heathrow Airport in London on June 28, according to the National Crime Agency.
A statement from the agency revealed that Border Force officers stopped the 28-year-old woman after she stepped off the flight. They discovered the drugs in packages sewn inside eight dresses.
She claimed during questioning that she'd been in Pakistan for a two-week vacation, her husband had given her the dresses and she didn’t know the heroin was inside, the statement said.
Choudry had been due to fly back to the UK several days later, but didn't. Instead, he tried to enter England under the radar by getting a train from Paris, France. He was detained at St. Pancras station in London six weeks later, the news release added.
The cab driver, from Slough in Berkshire, confessed to packing his wife's bags and being involved in the importation of the heroin and was jailed for eight years at Isleworth Crown Court on Friday, reports JackFM Berkshire.
His wife was found not guilty of involvement in the importation following a trial at the same court, per the statement.
The National Crime Agency's Siobhan Micklethwaite called the incident "a cynical attempt to import a large amount of class A drugs by a man who seemed quite happy for his wife to take all the risks on his behalf," according to the NCA statement.
Also on HuffPost: