TWO drug couriers who smuggled class A drugs worth £1½m through Dover, have today both been jailed for 13 years.

A ferry stewardess was persuaded to lend the two men her dock security pass, a Crown Court judge was told.

When customs staff later stopped Frederick Keight and Gary Lennox as they came out of the gate to a lorry trailer parking area, they found packets of powder containing heroin and cocaine in their rucksacks.

Keight, 48, of Radnor Park Road, Folkestone, and Lennox, 46, of Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria, were sentenced at Canterbury Crown Court, both having admitted two smuggling charges.

They claimed family problems were the reason for their involvement but Judge Timothy Nash disregarded their reasons, saying they were in it for the money.

He told them they were going to be paid to import drugs which made them professional drug couriers.