Pensioner launches ‘false imprisonment’ declare after smuggling cocaine
- Roger Clarke , 77, maintains he’s harmless regardless of his conviction
A pensioner who was caught with £1million price of cocaine on a Caribbean cruise liner says he needs to launch a £60,000 declare for ‘false imprisonment’, 5 years after he and his late spouse had been jailed over the smuggling plot.
Roger Clarke – who maintains he’s harmless regardless of his conviction – has damaged his silence on the case since being transferred from a Portuguese jail to the UK in 2021 – days after his spouse Susan died behind bars.
The 77-year-old mentioned he ought to have been freed in 2022 after serving half of his eight-year sentence and is planning to hunt compensation of £60,000 for ‘false imprisonment’.
Three judges convicted the retired couple of drug trafficking throughout a one-day trial in 2019 they usually had been every sentenced to eight years behind bars.
A British cruise ship cocaine-smuggling pensioner moved from Portugal to the UK to complete his jail sentence after his jailed spouse died of breast most cancers
The couple, initially from Kent however who lived in Guardamar, Spain, got eight-year sentences for his or her drug smuggling operation
The pair, initially from Kent however who lived in Guardamar, Spain, had been caught when plain-clothes officers from the Policia Judiciaria — Portugal’s critical crimes investigation company — boarded the Marco Polo ship and located 20lb of the Class A medication stitched into the liner of their 4 suitcases.
The Portuguese authorities, who made the arrests in Lisbon on December 4, 2018, had been appearing on data from Britain’s National Crime Agency working together with Spanish regulation enforcement.
The couple had been informed that they might serve their eight-year sentences in Portugal as a substitute of being despatched again to Britain.
Clarke had beforehand complained concerning the harsh circumstances in Lisbon jail, and claimed he misplaced six-stone and had a suspected coronary heart assault.
He additionally mentioned he and his spouse had been ‘harmless’ and he despatched a letter to former prime minister Boris Johnson begging him to look into the couple’s case.
Last yr he was moved to a lower-security web site earlier than the extradition. His spouse, who died in October final yr, was jailed in Tires jail.
The couple had been beforehand apprehended in Norway in 2010 after being discovered with 240kg of hashish.
They fled the Scandinavian nation however had been later extradited again, the place they had been placed on trial. Police mentioned that they took 4 cruises in two years, the place they used the vacation as a entrance to make as much as £26,500 every time.
Plain-clothes officers from the Policia Judiciaria — Portugal’s critical crimes investigation company — boarded the ship and located 20lb of the Class A medication stitched into the liner of their 4 suitcases
The Portuguese authorities made the arrest in Lisbon after the Marco Polo ship docked in 2018
Speaking to The Mirror from Sittingbourne, Kent the place he’s on launch from HMP Standford Hill, Clarke mentioned he needs to be freed so he can have a correct memorial for his late spouse and reconnect along with his household.
He added: ‘My stupidity, that is what triggered this.’
He informed the newspaper {that a} buddy had requested him to ‘carry a suitcase again from the Caribbean’ and he agreed, having finished it earlier than.
But when the suitcase was searched on arrival in Lisbon, there was cocaine within the lining.
He continued: ‘I used to be shocked. I had no concept. It was a model new suitcase. Whoever did it was very intelligent since you couldn’t see the seams or something.’
He mentioned that he blames himself for not checking and does not perceive why folks do not consider his proclamations of innocence.
Clarke informed The Mirror that he has critical well being points and requires a pacemaker – and desires £107 a day for being in jail ‘unfairly’.
He additionally claimed that when his spouse handed away, authorities ordered him to pay £35,000 to repatriate her physique. He might solely afford £1,500 for her cremation.
The Mirror reported that courtroom paperwork present the couple went on at the very least 16 drug-smuggling journeys in a automotive.
The cocaine con artists: A convict who pretended to be an upstanding expat to show their unwitting associates into drug mules… and a mom who deserted her youngsters to be with him
Roger and Susan Clarke had been well-known among the many expat neighborhood on Spain’s Costa Blanca.
The couple, of their 70s, lived in a whitewashed villa — full with a roof terrace and turret — within the resort of Guardamar del Segura, south of Alicante.
Outside their dwelling was a tongue-in-cheek nod to their Britishness: the statue of a backyard gnome, gifted to Roger by associates on his seventieth birthday.
Since arriving within the city, which is fashionable with retired Britons, Roger and Sue had absolutely embraced their new life.
He was a member of a golf society at a British-run bistro bar. She attended yoga and spinning courses. The two of them belonged to a wine membership and had been acquainted faces at eating places in Guardamar. They had been typical expats, in different phrases. Or, so it appeared. However, anybody invited again to their dwelling was shocked to seek out it was nonetheless virtually empty.
‘They didn’t have any private belongings in any respect, other than their garments,’ mentioned one fellow expat. ‘It was very strange. They kept it as if it were a house they might want to leave in a hurry.’
Might there be greater than a bit of reality in that commentary? It’s onerous to not come to that conclusion given the dramatic occasions that unfolded on a £3,000-a-head cruise the Clarkes had been having fun with.
Their ship, the Marco Polo — en route from the Bahamas to Tilbury, Essex — had simply docked in Lisbon when plain-clothes officers from the Policia Judiciaria (Portugal’s critical crimes investigation company) boarded the boat.
Pictured: The cruise ship Marco Polo, on which the couple had been arrested
The Portuguese authorities had been appearing on data from Britain’s National Crime Agency working together with Spanish regulation enforcement.
The topic of the ‘tip off’ was none apart from Roger Clarke and his grey-haired, bespectacled spouse Sue; ‘meek and mild mannered’ is how somebody described her in Guardamar.
Concealed of their cabin on the Marco Polo had been 4 suitcases with false bottoms containing 9kg (20lb) of cocaine with a road worth of £2 million.
In August 2018, a five-strong gang in Leeds had been jailed for a complete of 61 years after being caught with much less cocaine — 7.6kg — which quite places the stash police say was discovered within the possession of the pensioners into perspective.
Appearances will be misleading however absolutely by no means extra so than within the case of the Clarkes, who had been dwelling in sheltered lodging in Kent shortly earlier than transferring to Spain.
In reality, nearly the whole lot about them was a lie, it appears.
Roger Clarke informed everybody in Guardamar del Segura he was a chef, amongst different issues, in a Michelin-starred restaurant and owned two eateries in Benidorm.
He was truly a truck driver from London. It is way from sure Roger and Susan Clarke are even married. Our analysis has been unable to seek out any hint of a wedding certificates on this nation.
Nor, extra intriguingly, has their detention in Lisbon come as an excellent shock to those that knew them within the UK.
‘When we heard that a British couple from Spain had been held for drug smuggling Roger’s and Susan’s names instantly got here to thoughts,’ mentioned a former buddy. ‘We just thought, they are up to their old tricks again.’
That is as a result of the pair have each been jailed on the continent earlier than.
Pictured: Roger and Susan’s home within the resort of Guardamar del Segura, south of Alicante
They had been apprehended in Norway a decade in the past after being discovered with medicine, the buddy informed us. On that event, the pair managed to flee — however had been later extradited again to the Scandinavian nation, the place they had been placed on trial.
Roger Clarke obtained 5 years whereas his ‘wife’ was given 4 years; she served the ultimate 12 months in Holloway jail in north London.
How might anybody in Guardamar del Segura probably have guessed that the aged couple with a gnome exterior their entrance door had been convicted worldwide drug sellers who had been about to be arrested once more?
Even on the Costa, which has at all times attracted folks with a previous to cover, the story of Roger and Susan Clarke stands out.
One British couple who knew them in Guardamar claimed ‘Roger and Sue’ had supplied them a free vacation within the Caribbean in return for carrying some baggage, however they turned down the ‘dodgy’ supply.
Indeed, the extra we discover out concerning the septuagenarians, the extra the plot begins to resemble the script of a TV drama.
Let’s begin with ‘mild-mannered’ Sue Clarke. She has three youngsters from her first marriage. Susan and her former husband, an actor, had been collectively for about 25 years once they break up up.
She stayed within the marital dwelling in Cheadle, Cheshire, to take care of the kids who had been then of their late teenagers. Up till that time, she had been a ‘normal, loving mother’ to them, in response to those that knew the household within the late Nineties.
Then she met Roger Clarke and he or she merely ‘abandoned’ them, it’s claimed. ‘She just left the children with her husband and walked out on them,’ remembers a colleague on the now defunct vacation airline Air 2000 in Manchester, the place Susan labored as a secretary. ‘She had to make a choice and she chose to start a new life with Roger and that did not include the children.
‘The children were in their teens and you can imagine they were very upset. They have had little to do with their mother ever since.
‘From what I have been told there has never been any attempt at a reconciliation on her part. She has remained very distant.’
The colleague mentioned Roger Clarke was a ‘brash cockney’ who was ‘very cocksure’ of himself, and Susan was ‘smitten’ with him.
But was his title actually Roger Clarke? Those launched to him knew him as Roger Button and he’s actually listed below that title on the one-bedroom flat he and Susan first moved into in Whitefield, Manchester.
Given what we now know, you possibly can perceive why ‘Roger Button’, who was travelling throughout Europe as a truck driver, might need needed to reinvent himself as Roger Clarke. He and Susan ultimately moved South and lived for numerous years in Dorking, Surrey, and Betchworth, not removed from Reigate, the place they loved a cushty way of life which included, then as now, frequent Caribbean cruises.
Where they obtained their cash, although, was at all times a thriller.
Until, that’s, information filtered via to Britain from Norway about that first arrest and subsequent imprisonment.
The authorities knowledgeable Susan’s closest kinfolk, in fact. So her youngsters would have recognized that the mom who had turned her again on them was languishing in a overseas jail.
On their launch from jail, the couple went to stay in a ‘retirement’ complicated in Orpington, Kent, the place they remained from round 2013 and 2016.
Shortly afterwards, they surfaced on the Costa Blanca.
They had been fashionable sufficient to start out with however Roger Clarke’s brashness — and rudeness — started to grate. ‘He’s ordered drinks with out saying “hello”, even when the workers tried to get him to be extra well mannered by educating him how you can say it in Spanish,’ mentioned an area. ‘He certainly liked a drink. I’ve appear him have a brandy and beer for breakfast.’
He additionally acquired a nickname: ‘Mr Bull**** er’ as a result of, relying on who he was speaking to, he had been high chef or a paramedic or a member of the SAS.
But one story by no means modified: he mentioned he nonetheless ran a enterprise importing pineapples from the Caribbean to the UK, therefore their frequent cruises there.
Plumber Paul Craven and his spouse Pauline knew the Clarkes in addition to anybody in Guardamar del Segura.
‘I started a job cleaning their villa near where we live part-time and they very quickly befriended us,’ mentioned Pauline, 60, from Bolton, Lancashire. ‘We were flattered when they offered to treat us to a cruise. It was the dream of a lifetime.
‘Roger told me about his business importing pineapples and wanted me on the ship to keep his wife company. They offered to pay for everything.
‘Then they said we should buy some designer suitcases in the Caribbean because we could pick them up cheap and sell them for two or three times the price in Harrods once we got to the UK.
‘I didn’t assume something of it initially, however then they mentioned we must put our garments contained in the suitcases.’ When Pauline found they didn’t even inventory the suitcases in query in Harrods, she and her husband smelt a rat and politely turned down the free cruise.
‘I got asked to stop cleaning their home after that,’ Pauline added.
What a fortuitous resolution that turned out to be.
Needless to say, Roger Clarke attracted consideration on the cruise he and Susan launched into with their associates.
Fellow passengers couldn’t assist noticing Roger’s behavior of pulling out wads of money from his pockets and the way he and Susan had been reluctant to pose for vacation pictures. When they sailed into St Lucia Roger Clarke went ashore to purchase the suitcases which Paul and Pauline Craven would have bought had they been on the journey.
The similar suitcases through which officers from the Policia Judiciaria discovered the high-grade cocaine.
