Tag Archives: drug bust

BASTARDS! Police doctored GPS data which saw fishing boat crew jailed for drug bust

35E4CE7900000578-3671927-image-a-140_1467505600120A police electronics expert made a clumsy attempt to ‘doctor’ vital evidence that led to the conviction of four fishermen and their friend for drug smuggling, according to legal documents seen by this newspaper. The five men were accused of picking up rucksacks containing 560 lb of cocaine worth £53 million in the middle of the English Channel, before dropping them overboard off the south coast of the Isle of Wight for someone else to recover. At their trial, data from the satellite tracking device on their boat, the Galwad-y-Mor, appeared to damn them. But new evidence shows that after officers from the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca) seized the vessel’s Olex GPS machine, an officer tried to alter internal databases, apparently to make them conform more closely to the prosecution’s theory. And in another bombshell development, it can be revealed that the Galwad-y-Mor could not have dumped the drugs at the location alleged by prosecutors, because the water there is too shallow and the vessel would have run aground. Read the story here 10:21