Palma.Eleven of a total 15 people charged, three of them women, faced prosecution demands for jail sentences ranging from seven to nine years when they went on trial in Palma yesterday, accused of smuggling drugs into Ibiza and distributing them on the island. An Irish woman and a man from the Slovakian Republic also, faced similar demands taking the total number of suspects who should have been in the dock to 15. The Britons, all of them from Merseyside, and the other two accused were arrested in 2009 allegedly trafficking ecstasy, ketamine, cocaine and crack. The prosecutor asked for a nine year prison sentence for Shacher Cohen, the alleged UK based gang leader. The others faced demands for jail sentences of between seven and eight years.
As well as Cohen, the others from Merseyside have been named as Christopher Reisi Alexander, Alexandra Nicklin, Mitch Justin White, Ratan Keith Turner, Steven James Southgate, Aaron Reece Drozario, Dale Matthew Palmer, Ross Bonter, Brian Floyd Jones, Timothy Jones Gates, Zoe Alexander and Lauren Pamela McDaid. Also in the dock was Lena Butcher, from Ireland, and Michal Ondrusek, from the Slovakian Republic. In the end Cohen and Mitch Justin White, considered to be the ring leaders, were handed sentences of four-and-a-half years while the others, the alleged dealers, accepted sentences of two to three years.
Now the police are hunting the four who failed to show up in court.