'I was set up by drug runner': British pensioner on death row in Egypt insists he thought he was transporting incense on his yacht

harles Ferndale is accused of attempting to smuggle three tons of cannabis

A British pensioner sentenced to death for drug smuggling by an Egyptian court on Monday claims he set up by a drug runner.

Charles Ferndale, 74, is accused of attempting to smuggle three tons of the cannabis product hashish, worth almost £3million into Egypt aboard his boat and being part of an ‘international gang'.

But Mr Ferndale insists that he thought he was helping to move a cargo of incense from Aden in Yemen to Aqaba in Jordan for an Egyptian friend who had lent him money for yacht fuel.

The pensioner, three men from the Seychelles and one from Pakistan were arrested by armed police aboard a vessel near the Red Sea coastal town of Marsa Alam in 2011.

The Pakistani man is said to have fled the scene and to have been sentenced to death in absentia.

Mr Ferndale gave an interview to The Daily Telegraph from his prison cell in Qena, in the desert halfway between Hurghada and Luxor.

He had previously been held in Hurghada prison which he said had worse conditions.

He admitted he had been a 'fool' and made 'disastrous life decisions', but said insisted he was set up by an Egyptian friend he called 'Gamal.'

A wildlife conservationist in Pakistan, Mr Ferndale admitted he could not explain part of his life story 'because it would get me killed'.

But he said he had no knowledge he was helping to transport 118 bags of cannabis product hashish.

He told the newspaper he had picked up three crew members from the Seychelles to sail to Aden in April 2011.

It was there that he picked up the 'incense' that he had agrreed to carry for Gamal - he claimed Gamal was, unbeknown to him, the son of a prominent Egyptian drug-runner, and that he was being 'set up'.

Mr Ferndale told the paper he was born in South Africa to a family of antiapartheid activists.

After moving to Britain to study art, he took citizenship and then in 1972 moved to Pakistan to pursue his vocation of campaigning for wildlife - he ran a falcon sanctuary.

He said he had adult children in Britain - he said he had made them take different surnames to protect them and although they knew where he was, he refused to discuss them.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: ‘We are opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances.

Our consular team in Cairo are in contact with the British prisoner and we will do our utmost to prevent this execution.'

Ferndale, who is said to have been living mostly in the Pakistan port city of Karachi, and those convicted with him are expected to lodge an appeal against the sentence within the next 28 days.

Egyptian officials said yesterday they believed the bags of hashish had originated in Pakistan although a spokesman in the capital Islamabad said it was unaware of the case.

Anti-death penalty campaigner Kim Manning Cooper, of Amnesty International UK, said: ‘This is extremely worrying news.

‘The death penalty is cruel and unnecessary in all circumstances, but international standards clearly stipulate that capital punishment should never be imposed in non-lethal cases like this one.

‘We will be pressing for the sentence against Mr Ferndale and the others in this case to be commuted.

‘Executions were something we saw almost every year in Egypt during Hosni Mubarak's long authoritarian rule. Egypt should immediately impose a complete moratorium on the death penalty.

Amnesty claims that 91 people were sentenced to death in Egypt last year, although it is not thought that anyone has been executed for two years.

There have been no executions of Europeans for more than 20 years, officials in Cairo said.

There is also concern over fair trials in the country. A recent report claims that some 1,100 people failed to get a fair trial from the Egyptian courts in the past year.

In recent years, Ferndale has written for both the British and Pakistani media on subjects including terrorism, Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, the Middle East and Afghanistan.

He claims to have a degree from the Institute of Psychiatry in London and lists his occupation as charity worker.

The other men convicted in Egypt were named as Ronny Norman Jean, 41, Yvon John Vinda, 38, Dean Dominic Loze, 27, all from the Seychelles, and Munawar Saeed Khan, 44, from Pakistan.

Ferndale's case mirrors in some ways the plight of British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford.

She is in a Bali jail having been sentenced to death - by firing squad - after being convicted of trying to smuggle cocaine on to the holiday island in May 2012.

The 56-year-old is appealing against the death sentence.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk 05/06/2013