Sunny Idah jailed for soliciting cocaine importation

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Sunny Idah was sentenced to ten years, with the final year suspended, by Judge Catherine Murphy at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on 5 December 2014 for soliciting cocaine importation. She backdated the sentence to September 2010, when he went into custody.

Idah pleaded guilty to soliciting another person to unlawfully import cocaine. The charge concerned dates between 14 and 19 September 2010. His trial began in October 2014. The plea followed a week after the trial began and after applications by his legal team. The proceedings were reported on 5 December 2014.

Idah had previously been sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment for this and another drug trafficking offence. The Court of Criminal Appeal overturned the conviction after ruling that one of the secret recordings made by gardaí did not meet the required level of authorisation.

The case followed an international police operation involving Swiss and Irish undercover police. Detective Garda Brian Roberts said Idah offered two undercover gardaí €5,000 each to travel to Brazil, swallow cocaine and smuggle it back to Ireland. The report said Idah asked each man to swallow one kilogram of cocaine in pellets. They never travelled, and Idah was arrested the same day.