Engineers fined for smoking joint

FOUR British tourists were fined a total of £1,800 by a Larnaca court yesterday for possessing under four grammes of cannabis.

The four tourists are all from London and are employed by British Aerospace as engineers.

Graeme Rainsborough from Hampton, Stuart Hickey and Scott Clewley, both from Kingston, Surrey, and Mathew Sherlock from Croydon, were all fined £400 each.

The four friends are all aged 24.

Their lawyer, George Pitajis, had pleaded for leniency.

“The accused were on holiday together for the first time in four years,” he said, “they smoked just a small amount, because if they had smoked any more they wouldn’t be able to build planes,” said the lawyer.

The court decided against a custodial sentence, agreeing that the tourists had already spent five days in custody rather than at their luxury Ayia Napa hotel.

The Britons also missed their flight back to the UK and had to find extra money to pay for new tickets.

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