TWO men alleged to have been involved in the cultivation of £11m worth of cannabis at a nursery at Roydon are to face a retrial.
A Chelmsford Crown Court jury on Friday failed to reach verdicts on Angelo Pascale, 32, of Whitefield Road, Cheshunt, and Ecevit Bajrimoski, 23, of Huntingdon Road, Edmonton, who both denied conspiring to produce cannabis.
Nursery owner Alfonso D'Onofrio, 63, of Hamlet Hill, Roydon, was cleared of conspiring to produce cannabis and allowing his premises to be used for the illegal production of cannabis. He was discharged.
D'Onofrio told the jury he rented out a block of greenhouses to somebody and did not know what they were being used for.
During the three-week trial the court heard how Regional Crime Squad officers found 633 cannabis plants when they raided a block of greenhouses at Oakleigh Nurseries, Roydon, on September 23 last year.
The total weight of cannabis being cultivated was 4,425kgs with a street value of between £8m and £11m.
Pascale told police he knew the greenhouses contained cannabis but said he merely ran the lettuce business in the adjoining greenhouses.
Bajrimoski said he worked at the nurseries cleaning greenhouses and watering plants. He denied knowing the plants were cannabis.
After the jury acquitted the nursery owner of both charges, defence counsel Abbas Lakha said D'Onofrio had not been legally-aided and had incurred substantial costs and expenses. He asked that these costs should be met from public funds.
Recorder Rex Bryan agreed to the application.
He also discharged the jury from giving verdicts in respect of Pascale and Bajrimoski and said: ``The case will have to be reheard in front of another jury at a later date."~
Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000.Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article