COURT: Defendant, you have pleaded guilty in the Magistrates’ Court, confirmed today in this court, to a charge of trafficking in dangerous drugs, contrary to section 4(1)(a) and (3) of the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, Cap. 134, Laws of Hong Kong, and have been committed to this court for sentence.
The particulars of the offence are that you, on 22 April of last year, at Hong Kong International Airport, unlawfully trafficked in a dangerous drug, being 1.9 kilos of a mixture containing 0.69 kilos of heroin hydrochloride.
The Summary of Facts which you have agreed are straightforward and all too familiar. On the day in question you departed from Doha and arrived in Hong Kong at the Customs Arrival Hall at Terminal 1. You were intercepted and searched. Nothing illegal was found in your luggage or on your person, but despite that, you were sent to Queen Elizabeth Hospital for a medical examination, as the Customs officer suspected that you had drugs concealed inside your body.
At the hospital, a medical officer confirmed that foreign objects were indeed present inside your body, and between 22 and 26 April, you discharged a total of 100 capsules containing the drugs in your faeces.
An aggravating factor, of course, with this offence, is that there is an international element involved in this case clearly, as you brought these drugs into Hong Kong.
You are 37 years of age. You are a Ugandan national and have three children, all still extremely young. I am told that you are unmarried. You have no previous convictions here in Hong Kong. I am told also that you committed this offence for financial reasons as you were finding it difficult to make ends meet.
In sentencing you, I take all that has been said on your behalf into account. I have read the letter that you have written to me. But it is your plea of guilty which is really the only real mitigating feature here. I will give you credit for your plea of guilty which will be reflected in the appropriate discount being given to you.
The Court of Appeal sentencing guidelines, which can be found in the case of HKSAR v Abdallah Anwar Abbas CACC304/2008, indicates that a sentence of 20 to 23 years’ imprisonment is appropriate after trial for trafficking in between 600 and 1,200 grammes of heroin.
In this case, the court is dealing with 690 grammes of narcotic, and accordingly, I adopt 20 years and 6 months as my starting point. Due to the international element that I have mentioned earlier, I enhance that sentence by 6 months, coming to 21 years’ imprisonment. To reflect your plea of guilty, I will discount this sentence by one-third, arriving at a sentence of 14 years’ imprisonment.