A CANNABIS gardener caught tending a £90,000 drugs farm in Bradford has been jailed for 12 months.

Mikel Veliu had a wallet full of cash, food and keys to the outer doors at the house in Broadstone Way, Holme Wood, when the police forced their way in.

Veliu, 25, was living in the kitchen at the address after being transported there by those higher up the drugs chain, Bradford Crown Court heard today. 

Prosecutor Philip Adams said he had pleaded guilty to production of cannabis on September 25.

The police broke into the property at 7.30am and found four rooms at the terraced house turned over to the growing of cannabis. There were drugs plants in the living room, two bedrooms and the loft.

Mr Adams said the 168 plants would have yielded about 9,240 grams of cannabis with a street value in excess of £90,000.

He said it was an operation capable of producing significant quantities of the Class B drug for commercial use.

Veliu told the police he was £6,000 in debt to people traffickers. He was at the address for about two weeks and the factory was set up when he moved in.

The police found £480 in a wallet at the house. Mr Adams applied for the money to be forfeited under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

He conceded that Veliu was working as a gardener under the direction of others.

Anastasis Tasou said in mitigation that it was ‘a classic case’ of an Albanian man being employed as a cannabis gardener.

Veliu came illegally into the country and said he was approached at a refugee camp by people higher up the drugs chain. He was taken to Leicester and then to the house in Bradford.

He did have food, free access to and from the building and money, Mr Tasou said. But he was threatened and so was his family, to the extent that they fled from Albania to escape from any potential harm.

Judge Jonathan Rose accepted ‘there was a measure of threat’ against Veliu, but he had food, money and the ability to come and go as he wished and he made no attempt to tell the police about his predicament.

It was an operation capable of producing commercial quantities of cannabis, with the potential to yield a £90,000 reward for those higher up the chain.

Veliu too was ‘reaping no little reward.’ There was a substantial amount of money in the house, Judge Rose said.