Plans by English criminals to establish a network to bring heroin into Dublin were nipped in the bud by Operation Mainstreet, a court heard yesterday. John Miles was caught with the gang's first consignment of heroin worth £50,000 during a Garda operation against drug-dealing in the O'Connell Street area.
Miles (23), of Southgate, Hartlepool, Cleveland, pleaded guilty in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to having the heroin for sale at Upper O'Connell Street on October 9th, 1997. Judge Frank O'Donnell adjourned sentence to July 14th. Miles had been released a month earlier from a sentence in Britain when he was caught with the drugs he had brought on the ferry to Dun Laoghaire. He had 44 previous convictions, half of which involved cars and the rest burglary and theft.
Garda Sean McLaughlin, of the North Central Divisional Drugs Unit in Store Street, said a number of gardai were involved in surveillance of a bedroom in the Gresham Hotel on October 9th, 1997.
Miles and a woman were seen entering the bedroom and when they left at 2.25 p.m. they were stopped and searched. The heroin was found concealed in the front of the defendant's trousers.
Miles claimed initially that he had bought the drugs in St Michael's Estate, Inchicore. He later admitted he was to be paid £3,000 to bring the drugs from Birmingham. He would not name the organisers behind the operation because he feared for his life.
The hotel bedroom was searched and an English man and an Irish woman were arrested. No drugs were discovered, but gardai found £2,000 sterling and £160. Miles, who had been staying in a guest-house in Gardiner Street, was the only person charged.
Garda McLaughlin said Miles had visited Ireland three weeks earlier to contact a buyer to set up a heroin import business.