UK Mail on Sunday: A father who took his four children on an international drug-smuggling run has been jailed for eight years. Paul Makin, 31, and his ex-wife Laura were stopped at at the airport on the Venezuelan holiday island of Margarita carrying 24 kilos of cocaine in February.

The drugs, worth an estimated UK£1.2 million ($1,626,000), were stuffed into secret compartments in suitcases.

• The children, two-year-old twins Libby and Lucy, Megan, seven, and Jack, eight, were taken into care.

Makin, a former soldier from Liverpool, admitted drug trafficking in the Venezuelan courts this week and was handed an eight years sentence.  His solicitor John Wheate said he wanted to serve the term in a British prison. Mrs Makin remains in custody awaiting trial.

In an interview after his arrest, Makin claimed he believed he had been smuggling diamonds, not cocaine. "When the officer sliced the cases open and I saw the white substance I knew it was cocaine," he said, describing his arrest a the airport. "I was devastated. My heart sank. But that was the first time I knew coke was in the cases. I was told I would be carrying diamonds and someone in London was going to collect them. He told me that I would get a big bag of money -- the biggest I'd ever seen in my life."

Mrs Makin claimed to have known nothing about the drugs and insisted she was innocent. She said: "I was just on a family holiday and was looking forward to returning home. I had no idea about the drugs. The first I knew about it was when a guard took us to a small room. He stuck a spike into our suitcases and out came a white powder. He licked his finger and said 'Cocaina.' I was gobsmacked. I would never knowingly put my children through something like that."

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British-father-took-children-drug-smuggling-run-jailed-years.html