A fugitive Tyneside drug dealer extradited from Colombia after going on the run may serve less time behind bars due to the time he was detained in South America.
Robert Taylor was convicted and jailed for seven-and-a-half years in his absence in 2024 for drugs and money laundering offences after skipping the jurisdiction and going to Marbella just before he was due to stand trial.
Last November, Taylor was held in Colombia after the British government applied for his extradition. He was finally extradited earlier this month and police were waiting to arrest him at Heathrow Airport on August 14.
Court considers detention time
The case was brought back before Newcastle Crown Court because a document from the Colombian government states that the time during which he was detained in South America should count against the sentence he is now serving here.
Judge Edward Bindloss said his provisional view is the UK government should apply the time spent locked up in Colombia to his sentence and not him, but he adjourned the case until September 16 for further checks to be made on that and whether he can be dealt with for failing to attend his trial, given that was not mentioned on the extradition documents.
Judge Bindloss told Taylor: "It all seems a bit of a mess. I will resolve it, you need to know where you stand."
Arrest in Colombia
Taylor, 54, of Exeter Road, Wallsend, was arrested in Colombia following an investigation led by the National Crime Agency (NCA). He was described by the police force who arrested him as an alleged member of a transnational drug trafficking gang and an agent for the 'Irish mafia'.
A video showed the moment heavily-armed officers from the Policia Nacional De Colombia scaled a ladder to gain access to an upper floor of a property in Medellin to arrest Taylor and another man. They were both put on a plane, thought to have taken them to the Colombian capital Bogota, after being led away in handcuffs.
William Rincon, the new director of Colombia's National Police, described them, after their arrests, as fugitives from British justice who were acting as agents for the "Irish mafia" and co-ordinating drug shipments to the UK in alliance with the South American country's largest drug trafficking group the Clan del Golfo.
Colombia's president Gustavo Petro reposted footage of the police raid on social media and said: "Two members of the Irish mafia captured in Medellin by the National Police. This demonstrates that in trafficking to Europe, the major buyers of cocaine are not Colombian mafias, but rather multinational corporations working together."
Detective Chief Inspector Marc Michael of Northumbria Police said previously: "Taylor's arrest is another example of how we work with partners not just in the UK but around the world to make sure that individuals face justice. There are no hiding places for those involved in criminality in the North East and beyond."
Links to Clan del Golfo
Clan del Golfo former leader Dairo Antonio Usaga, or Otoniel as he is better known, was sentenced to 45 years in prison in the States in 2023 after being arrested in Colombia and extradited. He has been linked to a European cocaine super cartel which the Kinahan mafia is said to be part of along with groups like the Dutch Mocro Mafia.
The largest-ever haul of cocaine ever seized in Ireland is believed to have been supplied by the Gulf Clan, as it is known in English. The drugs, worth an estimated £135m, were discovered off the Irish coast in September 2023 on board a Panamanian cargo ship called the MV Matthew after Ireland’s elite Army Ranger wing boarded it at gunpoint.
Eight men, including six who were on the vessel which had departed from Curacao in Venezuela, were jailed for a total of 129 years in July.
