Cocaine cruise OAP held over £1m smuggling bust is ‘thrown BACK in jail’ after ‘his moaning landed him in hot water’
AN OAP drug mule jailed alongside his late wife for a £1million Cocaine haul is being sent to maximum security prison.
Roger Clarke, 77, was housed at HMP Stamford Hill, but he has been upgraded after complaining that prison bosses were breaching his human rights and demanding £60,000.
Roger and his wife Sue Clarke were caged for eight years after Portuguese cops found 20lbs of the Class A in their suitcase in 2018.
Sue died in jail in 2021 and Roger was deported to the UK to serve the rest of his sentence.
Roger believes he should have been out of prison in December 2022 as that marked the halfway point of the eight-year sentence.
Now he’s been forced to serve five and a half years.
A source told The Mirror: “Roger was enjoying day release from an open prison for months. But his claims of a ‘human rights breach’ have not gone down well with officials.
“It violated the terms of his temporary release and he’s been sent straight back to a closed prison. Roger was due to be released in May but that’s now completely up in smoke.”
Last week Roger told how he wants to be freed so he can have a proper memorial for Susan and to heal a rift with his family.
In HMP Standford Hill Roger was getting out of prison two days out of each month.
Roger said he spent his time in Portuguese prison with 10 murderers and rapists watching movies and reading Martina Cole novels.
He explained: “There was a lot of violence. I was hit by a prison officer once because I refused to sign a document because it was in Portuguese.
“It was terrifying being in that prison. I lost so much weight. There was nothing to do, I just walked around the patio.”
Despite years of drug running across Europe, Roger maintains his innocence and now wants £60,000 compensation.
The couple, from Chatham, Kent, were on a cruise from St Lucia to Portugal in December 2018 when pals allegedly asked Roger to take a suitcase.
Roger said he had done it for the couple before and despite being searched “four times” there was never anything found.
But the grandparents were arrested following a tip-off as the Marco Polo liner docked in Lisbon where the four suitcases were found stuffed with cocaine.
Their 2018 arrest came just eight years after the pair were caught smuggling 240kg of cannabis into Norway, before going on the run to the Costa Blanca, Spain.
Police said they used four cruises in two years as a front, making as much as £26,500 per trip.
The Sun has approached the Ministry of Justice for Comment.