Drug smuggling

Jailed: Drug smugglers who dropped £2.5 million of cocaine into Kent fields on EU referendum day

Three international drug smugglers who organised for £2.5 million of cocaine to be dropped out of a light aircraft into a field in Kent on the day of the EU referendum vote have been jailed for nearly 40 years.

Jonathan Hart, 50, Andrew Barrett, and Michael Mealing, both 41, arranged the drop-off with a Belgium pilot on June 23 last year, searching the countryside for a suitable landing site. 

Mealing and Barrett were seen by undercover National Crime Agency officers a week earlier meeting in the beer garden of a Rochester pub, looking at documents about the light aircraft and ordnance survey maps of Kent.