It was an intricate sting, set up to foil one of the biggest cocaine smuggling consignments ever destined for Scotland.

Police and Customs officers waited and watched as the drug trafficking gang spent hours unloading 500 bales of rubber at a warehouse in a business park in Stepps, north-east of Glasgow.

The gang expected the bales to be packed full of Class A drugs worth £50m, in 1kg blocks sealed in wax to fool sniffer dogs. Unknown to them, however, the cargo had already been intercepted by customs officials at Felixstowe in Suffolk and the cocaine replaced by millions of grains of sand.

Afterwards, four Scots were arrested and jailed for almost a combined 70 years in June 2003 at the High Court in Edinburgh. Businessmen James Mair and William Grant were each sentenced to 18 years, while David Frew and Sean McAdam received terms of 12 and 10 years respectively.

However, now it appears the smugglers may not have been the only ones to make a mistake. New documents seen by The Herald indicate that Grant was not aware of what the consignment contained, nor directly involved in the operation.

Grant was convicted for sending the bogus faxes which were used to lend some legitimacy to the cargo. However, since the trial an independent fax expert has verified that these faxes could easily have been rigged so it seemed as if they were sent from a different machine.

In addition, Nicola Smith, Mair's secretary, told the court that Grant had told her about the shipment, but in a police statement that has only just been disclosed to the defence, she explained Mair had phoned from Benidorm to tell her about the delivery.

In this statement, she explained Grant did not even know anything about the delivery. At the trial, the prosecution argued that Mair and Grant ran aspects of the business together. Lord Carloway said that Grant was "entwined" to a "material degree" in Mair's company G&L Distribution.

However, in the previously unseen statement, Ms Smith said Grant was simply one of the drivers.

Peter Ritchie, a retired detective superintendent from Lothian and Borders police who spent five years at Europol and worked as the head of the organised crime squad in the National Crime Intelligence Service, has been working on the case for the past two years.

Mr Ritchie, currently working on the Billy Wright inquiry in Northern Ireland, said he was convinced of Grant's innocence. "The more I looked at the evidence, the more convinced I became that he is innocent," he said. "Technically, once we analysed the evidence, we realised it just did not stack up.

"He seems to have been convicted on the grounds that he sent a fax and that Nicola Smith said he was involved. The expert we asked to look at this indicated the fax could have been sent from anywhere. Based on my experience, the fact that he, unlike the rest of the group, was not handed a new mobile phone is just unthinkable in a drugs trafficking case.

"In court, they said a notebook found in his car was financial evidence of his involvement. I don't understand how they came to this conclusion when this book is all about his notes on things like buying petrol as he went about his business."

Grant, currently serving his sentence in Glenochil, is about to lodge final appeal papers with the courts. He is appealing on the grounds of insufficiency of evidence and non-disclosure. Apart from the discrepancies in Ms Smith's statements, his lawyers are still trying to get hold of a number of documents relevant to the case, including the surveillance logs on Grant that claim he used classic counter-surveillance measures to shake off detectives.

This lack of disclosure, the latest in a long line, is fuelling an ongoing public and legal debate about the fairness of the prosecution picking and choosing what to share with the defence. Last month, a review on disclosure commissioned by the then Scottish Executive said prosecutors should be legally bound to provide full information to defence lawyers in advance of a trial.

Lord Coulsfield, who chaired the review, was also one of three judges who presided at the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands. He called for legislation requiring the prosecution to have regard to "the overriding requirement of a fair trial".

In 2005, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the highest criminal appeal court, quashed the convictions of two Scots on the grounds that the Crown had failed to disclose vital documents and said that this breached the European Convention on Human Rights.


Two other appeals have since hinged on non-disclosure in part, as will two other pending high-profile cases: the Lockerbie bomber and Nat Fraser. Regardless of this, the Crown is still refusing to fully disclose information.

Fraser's appeal begins around the same time as a special hearing in Edinburgh on disclosure. Advocates are arguing, in relation to four appeal cases including that of Grant, that every document relevant to a case should be disclosed. The aim is to set a precedent for future cases and other appeals.

"It's a disgrace that the Crown is continuing with its policy of only disclosing those documents it wishes to hand over," said one advocate, who did not wish to be named.

"England and Wales and other countries have systems in place explaining what should be disclosed and requiring the prosecution to detail the documents which have not been shown. The Crown's position is utterly untenable. This hearing should decide that."

Although the Crown has improved and speeded up its procedures on disclosure, gaps in high-profile cases, many of which have already been thrown out for being miscarriages of justice, continue to appear.

For justice to be done, in the case of Grant and anyone else before the bench, it seems logical that both defence and prosecution have access to all relevant evidence.