DATELINE: 15th November 2001

DIVERS GO DOWN FOR 10 YEARS
Matthew Woodcraft and Lee Woolcock were surfacing from a night dive in the Thames when they found themselves confronted by a RIB full of armed police officers with spotlights.

The pair had been diving to retrieve cannabis resin worth £1.5 million, stowed beneath mc Pigi, a large cargo vessel. The ship was bringing sugar to Silvertown docks in East London from Kingston, Jamaica. Police believe that the vessel was unwittingly being used to courier drugs by a Yardie gang, and that the drugs had been attached to the ship in Jamaica without the knowledge of the crew.

The divers were caught in-water, holding the drugs, so there was little they could do to avoid custody and prosecution. Both were convicted of conspiracy to supply drugs. Thirty-one-year-old Woodcraft from Essex was sentenced to six years and Woolcock, 32, was sentenced to four.

Trapped by the tides
The police had been studying the drug-smuggling operation for some time. Aware of the dangerous tidal nature of the Thames, they calculated that there were only two opportunities in a day to carry out the retrieval of the drugs. Given the nature of the dive, the police anticipated that it was likely to be carried out at night and were lying in wait when the divers entered the water.

The drug had been hidden in tins which were then packed inside tyre inner tubes and stashed in the void above the rudder housing of the vessel. The void was above water level, but could only be reached by diving underneath the hull.

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