A British shaman and self-proclaimed voodoo priest was jailed for 15 months yesterday for using a sacred drink containing a Class A drug at a healing ceremony.
Peter Aziz, 51, made two brews of Ayahuasca with the leaf of the Chakruna plant – which contains the banned drug N-dimethyltriptamene or DMT – which were used during the ceremony in a disused hotel.
The brew, used to bring on hallucinations and which often makes those who drink it vomit, was given to 17 people during a candle-lit ceremony on the week-long religious retreat in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.
Mr Aziz, of Buckfastleigh, Devon, denied two counts of producing a Class A drug and two counts of supplying a Class A drug but a jury found him guilty of all charges after just two-and-a-half hours’ deliberation on August 8 following a trial at Bristol Crown Court. Sentencing, Judge Michael Roach said he reduced the sentence after hearing that Mr Aziz had “wholeheartedly done a lot of good for a lot of people”.
“You knew it was wrong to produce this drug and you knew it was wrong to supply it. But produce and supply it you did,” Judge Roach said.
“It is a Class A drug and I have to take into account that is the most serious form of drugs. I bear in mind that from what I have read that it seems ... that you have served to provide assistance to others. But that said there is no doubt in my mind that I have to treat this matter as serious, which means they require a prison sentence.”
Mr Aziz gave a small wave to his shocked family in the public gallery as he was led away.
Mr Aziz was arrested by police following the week-long religious event at the disused Dorville Hotel in Madeira Road, Weston-super-Mare, in December 2007, when he was filmed by a GP working for the BBC who posed as a cancer patient.
Claiming to have 35 years of experience of various alternative practices, he featured in a BBC Two documentary earlier that year called Trust Me, I’m A Healer.
Nick Lewin, representing Mr Aziz, said he was a “fundamentally good man” who was “determined to help other people”. The DMT, he said, was contained within a plant and had not been in its crystalline form more commonly bought and sold by drug dealers. Mr Aziz, he said, made only £10,000 a year and lived in a humble two-bedroom former council house with his family.
“This isn’t a case where a man is selling cocaine to make a good living of Maseratis and villas on the Riviera,” he told the court.