A Swansea dealer skipped court to travel with his girlfriend. Barry Gilbert decided to fly with his partner rather than go to court to be convicted of trafficking a powerful drug similar to Valium.

An arrest warrant was issued for him and the 52-year-old was arrested as he stepped off the plane as the couple returned from an overseas excursion.

Cian Cutter, prosecutor, told Swansea Crown Court that on 15 June 2020, police went to Maysglass Road in Hendross, Swansea, following a call about a disturbance at a property. When the police arrived at the scene, they saw a man standing outside the first-floor apartment. Seeing them approaching, the man began gesticulating and calling out to people in the apartment, appearing to be trying to alert them to the presence of the police.

The policemen entered the apartment and found three people inside, one of them being the defendant Gilberto. While searching one of the three, a woman who had a “blue cape” around her mouth, police found more than 1,000 etizolam pills in her jacket. Another 585 pills were found under the bed mattress, some of them in packs of 10 pills. Etizolam is a powerful valium-like sedative, classified as a Schedule C drug, which is becoming increasingly popular on the black market.

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The court heard that the following day, police searched Gilbert’s apartment in the Mount Pleasant area of ​​Swansea and found 16 bottles of blue pills identical to those found the day before. One of the bottles was emptied, its contents counted and it contained 1152 etizolam pills. Around £1,300 in cash was also seized along with a notebook that appeared to be the drug lord’s ‘list’. The prosecutor said police estimated the pills could be worth up to £4,000 on the street if sold in packs of 10.

Barry Gilbert, of Penmaen Terrace, Mount Pleasant, Swansea, previously pleaded guilty to two counts of possession with intent to supply etizolam and was free on bail when he appeared in the dock for sentencing. He already has 20 crimes on his record, including possession of amphetamines and marijuana for sale. The court heard that although the etizolam-related crime took place in the summer of 2020, charges were not filed until 2022. Gilbert pleaded guilty but fled the country before he could be convicted last June and an arrest warrant was issued. . against him. The order was finally carried out when he got off the plane after returning to the UK.

Leila Carballo-Williams of Gilbert said the defendant effectively “buried his head in the sand” before sentencing and took a trip with his then partner and now wife. The lawyer pointed to the long delay in filing charges.

Discounting his guilty plea by one-third, Judge Catherine Richards sentenced Gilbert to 24 weeks in prison for drug-related offenses and four weeks on criminal bail. The defendant will serve up to half of the 28 weeks in prison before being released on leave to serve the rest of the community.

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