I started working at Inchcape Shipping Services trading as KMMC in Kuwait in September 2003 as an operations maintenance manager on Military Logistics.
Travel cross border after 2005 became very highly restricted under military escort only.
And then after 2006 only by air.
We naturally cut down our movements to the bare minimum and I flew to Kuwait to collect personnel and cash about once a month.
The security situation deteriorated early 2006 and a number of my collegues opted out of the scary war ..left the operational area.. and l fell into a more senior position and became the most senior field operations manager over the entire project.
Port operations at Umm Qassar harbour separated from my control but l still flew in from time to time by helicopter and dropped off large quantities of cash for the execution of shipping services as they required.
All my flights were on military aircraft.. authorised by British ministry of defence (MOD) and as my activities were all operational .. my travel authorisations were military, vetted by British Military Attache at the Embassy in Kuwait.
I required no passport and carried only a laminated UK. MOD military authorisation registered with the Kuwait Ministry of Interior.
Copies of all these authorisations are on file at Inchcape Shipping Services in Kuwait.
As a supplier of labour ..materials and machines to a number of different subcontractors... l sourced all our requirements and spoke with many local suppliers in lraq.
I was a networker and knew everybody.. military and civilian....and everyone knew me in Iraq.
I arrived on a military hercules Aircraft from Iraq at the Kuwait military airport on the midnight flight of 17th September 2008.
I went through all the high security checks before leaving together with staff from the british embassy.
I carried only cash and documents.
After l had arrived back at my hotel...l drove the company vehicle to my office where I was to go over all the paperwork and finances for the next few weeks.
En route to my office.. the lraqi contractors phoned me from their location on site in Basrah airport , to request me to collect their tools.
I was running late.. it was Thursday and my bosses at the office were expecting me along with a heap of gifts I had managed to get hold of some weeks previously.
So l was a bit annoyed by the request to detour so far out of my way...but l was strictly obliged to do their every bidding and to keep our relations on track for the promise of much future business.
There was no question.. l had no option.. and so l sped out in my pickup to collect all the goods they had waiting for me to deliver.
l drove straight to the fuelstation location they described... and then loaded the articles..wheelbarrow.. toolbox.. spades and a spare tyre.
I left immediately to the location they directed me to , near my hotel.
There was nothing illegal or suspicious and l trusted them all completely.
I had worked with them for months before, loading and unloading cement in the batching yard and had eaten lunch with them a couple of times.
When l arrived, the whole CID drug squad were lying in wait for me there.
They made the whole thing look like it was l that was "the big drug supplier", who had just driven from lraq in my pickup with a load of beer .. hashish inside a tyre.
The tyre had been filled with packets of hashish and neatly closed using some machine i guess. Nearly 50 kg i was told.
I guessed far too much..
I was arrested that afternoon of 18th Sept 2008.
My flight home had been booked for the following day.
A flight i still long for.
The Cid police took all the cash in my possession.. and threw all my documentation out into the carpark and interrogated me alone for days until finally in the end a police investigator phoned the embassy.
The whole thing had been meticulously planned and it is now so awfully simple to see it all in hindsight.
There were four other tyres with those druglords that i saw..
I was arrested for doing my job a little too well...
Slammed into jail where ive been ever since for this.
For doing this.
The druglords and their cohorts all free and trading out there, have not stopped laughing at all this... ever since.
Surely seems like a setup.
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