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UK: Cannabis grower faces prison term
Adam Gretton Eastern Daily Press
Friday 05 Oct 2007 The "gardener" who tended hundreds of cannabis plants at a farmhouse in a Norfolk village was warned yesterday that he faced a prison sentence. Thirty-year-old Toan Nguyen-Anh appeared before magistrates charged with growing cannabis plants worth tens of thousands of pounds at a farmhouse at Kenninghall, near Diss. The Vietnamese speaker admitted to one count of producing the controlled drug between July 31 and September 26 at the home in Fersfield Road, which was converted into a drugs factory. Nguyen-Anh was arrested at the four-bedroom farmhouse in Kenninghall last week following a series of drug seizures by Norfolk Police's western area CID tactical unit, which also included the discovery of a cannabis factory at Lyng, near Dereham, and a haul of ecstasy tablets in King's Lynn. Kevin Eastwick, prosecuting, yesterday told Thetford Magistrates' Court that officers found the defendant in the farm building at Kenninghall, which had been "converted completely" for growing cannabis plants. "The police say they found 385 plants growing inside along with the lighting and heating equipment that is needed. Mr Nguyen-Anh has accepted that he was the gardener. He says he was put there by others to care for the plants on a daily basis," he said. Mr Eastwick said the shortest custodial sentence he had found for producing cannabis was 12 months for growing 75 plants and the jail term would go up according to the sophistication and the number of plants seized. "The mitigating factors would be how closely connected he was with the set-up of the operation," he said. Mr Eastwick added that inquiries were continuing to establish whether Nguyen-Anh was either a Vietnamese or Slovakian national. Magistrates remanded him in custody until his sentencing at Norwich Crown Court on a date to be fixed. Following the hearing, western area Supt Nick Dean said the investigation was ongoing. "This case comes after some recent high-profile drugs operations in the west of the county and shows that they were not one-off hits. We have the capacity to continually act on information and target the controlled drugs trade on a daily basis. "Carefully planned operations such as this one are often the culmination of weeks or even months spent gathering intelligence," he said. http://new.edp24.co.uk/
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