ARIES KENNEDY IBEKWE v. R.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL

1993, No. 635
(Criminal)

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J U D G M E N T

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Penlington J.A. (giving the judgment of the court):

1. This is an application for leave to appeal against sentence on a count of trafficking in dangerous drugs before Deputy Judge Wesley Wong in the Supreme Court to which the applicant pleaded guilty.

2. The facts of matter were that as a result of information received an officer of the narcotics bureau had a conversation with the applicant in the Hyatt Regency Hotel coffee shop on the 12th May 1993. The applicant offered to sell him a quantity of heroin for US$10,000. As a result of this conversation officers went to where the applicant was staying in a guest house in Chun King Mansions and the drugs were handed over. The parcel contained 266 grams of a mixture containing 226 grams of salts of esters of morphine, No.4 heroin. There was therefore a very high concentration of the actual narcotic and it may well have been later broken down.

3. The applicant in his written grounds of appeal said that he was stranded in Hong Kong as his air-ticket had expired and he committed this offence because he was desperate and had no money. He also tells us that he has dependants in his home country, Nigeria, namely his parents and four younger brothers and sisters, he being the main breadwinner of the family.

4. We find it difficult to accept, on the basis of the facts which were not in dispute, that this was just an offence committed because of desperation but even if so it was a deliberate attempt to sell a substantial quantity of high concentrate heroin. The applicant does not say how he, a stranger to Hong Kong, was able to buy the drugs here which he was attempting to re-sell.

5. So far as his personal circumstances are concerned as this court has said on many occasions personal circumstances can count little in this type of offence. While we naturally have sympathy with the applicant's dependants in Nigeria we must consider the interest of the public of Hong Kong and the menace to it which is posed by the traffic in heroin. The sentence imposed is within the guidelines for trafficking in this quantity of drugs. We see no reason why this court should interfere with the sentence and the application is refused.