960406

Colombo court

sentences two

for heroin

smuggling

COLOMBO: A Sri Lankan court has sentenced a Briton and an Indian to life imprisonment for smuggling heroin and hashish into the country, court officials said on Saturday.

Glen Michel, 29, of Stanford, England, and Nagamuttu Thangavel, 38, from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, were sentenced on Friday by high court judge P. Wijeratne in Negombo, a Colombo suburb.

Police say the two were not working together, although both had arrived from Madras on the same flight on Dec. 11, 1994.

Michel had been carrying 34 grams of heroin, 721 grams of hashish, and two grams of hashish oil concealed in his shoes when he was arrested at Colombo's international airport.

Customs officials had found 134 grams of heroin in Thangavel's suitcase.

Under Sri Lanka's tough narcotics laws, offenders face either the death penalty or life imprisonment for possessing more than two grams of heroin.-AP