Aunt of aristocrat on £4.5m cocaine charge: 'He's innocent'

Jack Marrian, 31, is charged with cocaine trafficking
AFP
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The family of a Scottish aristocrat charged with trafficking cocaine worth £4.5 million into Kenya today insisted he was innocent.

Jack Marrian, 31, was arrested after Kenyan police and US Drug Enforcement Agency officials in Mombasa found 100kg of the drug in containers that had arrived from Brazil.

Marrian, who attended Marlborough College, where the Duchess of Cambridge studied, is managing director of Mshale Commodities, the Kenyan importer the prosecution says would have received the drugs.

He is the son of Lady Campbell of Cawdor, daughter of the late Hugh Campbell, the sixth Earl Cawdor. The family estate is the 14th-century Cawdor castle near Nairn in Scotland.

Marrian’s aunt Liza Campbell today told the Standard: “Jack is a hard-working, loyal employee of a large, respectable sugar company.

"He has been thrown into a nightmarish situation by a perfectly normal consignment getting contaminated by smugglers during international transit.

"He is completely innocent and we are confident that the Kenyan police will exonerate him soon.”

The class A narcotics, with a street value of about £4.5 million, were allegedly shipped in containers labelled as carrying sugar destined for Uganda.

Police said Marrian and his co-accused, a Kenyan, had placed calls to the people processing the cargo at the port before it was impounded.

Marrian was remanded in custody after being described as a “flight risk” when he appeared in court in Nairobi yesterday to deny the charges.

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