by Keith Hunt

Two men caught red-handed at one of the largest cannabis factories to be found in Kent have walked free from court.

Yusuf Ahmed and David O’Neill were given suspended sentences after a judge accepted they were just employed as security guards and only discovered the scale of the operation at the last moment.

Ahmed, 32, and O’Neill, 38, denied being concerned in the production of the drug, but were convicted in February.

Maidstone Crown Court heard police discovered a warehouse stocked with skunk cannabis plants at a farm in Paddock Wood.

It was estimated the factory would produce more than 66 kilos of the drug worth around £655,000 at street level.

“It was stocked full of valuable cannabis plants,” said prosecutor David McNeill. “There were literally hundreds of plants that would produce a valuable harvest.”

It was possible a criminal gang was running Little Rhoden Farm in Lucks Lane, he said, but only Ahmed and O’Neill were then when officers swooped.

“It is not suggested they are the leaders or organisers, but they played their part,” he continued. “They may have been guards or minders.”

The warehouse was in a secure yard and police were at first unable to get access during the raid on March 1 last year because the doors were bolted.

“They could hear people talking inside and they could smell cannabis coming from the warehouse and the hum of fans,” said Mr McNeill.

“There was a fully developed cannabis farm,” said the prosecutor. “There were 415 plants inside a marquee. It was skunk, the most potent cannabis available.”

Ahmed and O’Neill were hiding in a loft.

Miss Recorder Anna Laney at first sentenced Ahmed, of Abbey Wood, South East London, and O’Neill, of Woolwich, South East London, to 23 months imprisonment suspended for two years, but had to reduce it to 12 months for legal reasons.

They will also have to complete 250 hours unpaid work and be subject to a curfew for three months.

The judge told them: “You played a minor role in this operation. You became involved as a consequences of your naivete in circumstances where you had little, if any, awareness of the scale of the operation going on behind those doors.”