Two men were this morning jailed a total of 17 years and fined €45,000 after they admitted to cocaine and heroin trafficking in 2007.

Duncan Scerri, 38, of Salina, and Walid Laouini, a 35-year-old Tunisian who lives in St Paul's Bay, chose to admit to the charges rather than stand trial by jury.

Previously, they had both pleaded not guilty. The case was heard behind closed doors following a request by the defence.

Mr Scerri was jailed nine years and fined €25,000, Mr Laouini eight years and fined €20,000.

The police said that they had seized close to a kilo of cocaine after searching their vehicle at the Luxol grounds at the end of an operation that had been going on for several weeks.

In the bill of indictment, the drugs were revealed to be 57.3 per cent pure and were worth some €70,000.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.