Qld: Ship's master on trial over failed drug shipments

AAP General News (Australia)
02-02-2009
Qld: Ship's master on trial over failed drug shipments

By Christine Flatley

BRISBANE, Feb 2 AAP - A ship's master helped organise two failed attempts to bring
millions of dollars of cannabis resin into Australia, a court has been told.

Andrew Robert Hyde was the master of a vessel named Highlander, which made two unsuccessful
attempts to bring almost eight tonnes of the drug to Queensland in late 1996, the Supreme
Court in Brisbane was told on Monday.

It is alleged that Hyde, 51, and other co-conspirators organised for the Highlander
to meet another vessel in waters off Tuvalu, a Polynesian island nation in the Pacific
Ocean, where the drugs were to be transferred.

Commonwealth prosecutor Glen Rice told the court Hyde made two attempts in September
and October 1996 to collect the drugs, but the planned rendezvous failed to eventuate.

Hyde returned to Queensland's Sunshine Coast after the second trip and transferred
responsibility of the Highlander before heading to South America, the court was told.

He had allegedly already left the country before the drugs were eventually imported
by others and seized under a joint Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Customs investigation.

Hyde has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to import prohibited imports.

Mr Rice told jurors they would hear evidence from a number of witnesses during the
10-day trial about Hyde's alleged involvement in the two failed importation attempts.

Evidence would include surveillance tapes that had recorded Hyde speaking in code about
the proposed handover of the drugs, Mr Rice said.

The court was told Hyde had created a document containing the codebreakers, which police
found onboard the Highlander when they conducted their search in December 2006.

The trial before Justice James Douglas continues.

AAP cf/pjo/tnf/jlw

KEYWORD: HYDE

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