BY TASHIEKA MAIR, Star Writer
WESTERN BUREAU
JAPANESE NATIONAL, Toshiyuki Tsuchiya, who tried to smuggle 15 pounds of ganja out of Jamaica, was sentenced to three months imprisonment in the Montego Bay Resident Magistrate's Court on Friday.
Tsuchiya, 26, pleaded guilty to possession, dealing in and at-tempting to export the drug.
Allegations say on February 22 Tsuchiya checked in at the Sangster International Airport to board a flight to Detroit with connections to Japan. His suitcases were searched and found to contain packages of ganja weighing 15 pounds in a secret compartment.
TRUSTING CABBIE
Through an interpreter, he told RM Winsome Henry that he was in Jamaica to sightsee and listen to reggae music. He said when he arrived on February 6, he met a taxi operator who trusted him enough to let him stay at his home instead of a hotel. Tsuchiya said when he was leaving the country, the man gave him a larger suitcase as the wheels on his were damaged. He said he felt the difference in the weight of the suitcase but had no idea it had drug. He told the RM he would never attempt to smuggle any illegal substance out of the country.
PLANNED ENTERPRISE
However RM Henry said she believed that it was a planned enterprise as she could not accept that someone would chose to stay with a total stranger instead of a hotel and that this may have been another clever scheme for Jamaicans to use vulnerable Japanese to smuggle drugs.
He will spend an extra three months in prison if he does not pay a $15,000 fine for possession and $80,000 for dealing.
Do
you have a problem? Is something bothering
you? Write to 
