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Taxi driver duo cleared of involvement in £200k cannabis deal after drugs recovered on Lanarkshire motorway
Two taxi drivers have been cleared of involvement in a £200,000 cannabis deal.
Anwar Shafi, 59, and Kamran Hussain, 41, were arrested after a cross-border police surveillance operation.
Officers followed Shafi from Paisley to Birmingham where a number of boxes were put in his car.
He then drove to Carlisle where the boxes were transferred to Hussain's vehicle.
Officers recovered the cannabis after stopping the vehicles on the M74 in Lanarkshire.
The green herbal material was in vacuum bags packed into the boxes.
The men walked free from Hamilton Sheriff Court this week when a jury returned not proven verdicts.
They were accused of being concerned in the supply of cannabis on the M74, near Bothwell, and elsewhere in Scotland and England in October 2020.
The indictment stated that the men were acting with another individual who has since died.
Shafi, of Campsie Drive, Renfrew, and Hussain, of Larch Road, Glasgow, insisted they didn't know what was in the boxes.
The court heard that the third man, who has since died, got Shafi to take him to Birmingham to see family.
Hussain said he believed the boxes transferred to his car on the return journey contained household goods.
The court heard that the vehicles were stopped by police in the early hours of the morning.
Jurors were shown footage of bags containing herbal material being taken from a car by police officers.
Detective Constable Marc Shevlin, of a specialist drugs unit, said almost 21 kilos of cannabis was seized.
The herbal material was in sealed vacuum bags, each weighing around 1 kilo.
DC Shevlin estimated the wholesale value of the haul at £83,600.
If sold in small £20 deals, the cannabis could realise £209,000, he said.
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