Jordan Brook had arrived back in Manchester on a flight from Bangkok.
From: manchestereveningnews.co.uk
A drug mule was relieved when he was caught, his lawyer said, as he told Border Force officers at Manchester Airport: "I'll be honest, I've got weed... no point in lying."
Jordan Brook, 31, arrived from Bangkok early on a Thursday morning. He was stopped by Border Force officers before he could leave the airport.
Searches discovered he had tried to smuggle in cannabis worth more than £100,000, Manchester Crown Court heard. His lawyer said Brook, from Eccles, Salford, didn't know what was to follow when he arrived back on home soil.
He said Brook was was relieved to have been stopped. Prosecuting, Sacha Waxman told how Brook arrived at Manchester Airport at 7.20am on April 17 on a flight from Bangkok, via Bahrain.
When he was stopped by Border Force officers, Brook admitted: "I'll be honest, I've got weed... no point in lying."
He told officials he didn't know what his baggage, which had been checked into the hold of the aircraft, looked like. Brook said he didn't know the PIN code to open the suitcases.
Officers retrieved two suitcases bearing Brook's name from the carousel. Within the two cases was 40.5kilos of cannabis, said to be worth £121,000 if sold by the kilo.
In an interview with police, Brook replied 'no comment' to questions, but replied 'definitely not' after being asked whether he was a victim of duress or modern slavery.
Brook has three previous convictions on his record, including for dealing cannabis in 2018, for which he was handed a suspended prison sentence.
Defending, Michael James said his client had pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity - before magistrates. He said Brook claimed he was 'pressured' to return to the UK, but that it did not meet the test for duress.
Mr James said: "He expresses a sense of relief that he was stopped, because he didn't really know what was going to happen, who he was going to meet, on the other side of the customs barrier."
He appealed to the judge to pass a suspended sentence, to allow Brook to be released from jail. The defendant, who appeared in court by video link from HMP Altcourse in Merseyside, has spent 59 days on remand prior to the sentencing hearing.
Mr James said Brook is a father-of-two and that he wants to be reunited with his children. He said Brook was impacted by the death of his father as a child and noted that he has struggled behind bars after failing to receive medication for his 'debilitating' social anxiety.
Judge William Waldron KC said others must be deterred from trying to do the same. He told Brook: "The courts simply cannot and will not tolerate the importation of drugs into this country, via Bangkok or anywhere else."
Brook, of Corporation Road, Eccles, pleaded guilty to one count of being concerned in the fraudulent evasion of a prohibition on the importation of a class B drug.
He was sentenced to 18 months and told he would serve 40 per cent of the term behind bars before being released on licence.