Teenage mum set up raid on Cardiff cannabis factory

Eighteen-year-old mother-of-two Fatama Jah had hoped to make £10,000 by setting up the robbery

A father who turned his city flat into a cannabis factory was stabbed and robbed of the drugs by two criminals lured to Wales by the promise of a lucrative payday.

The raid on the north Cardiff home was arranged by an 18-year-old mother-of-two, who this week received a seven-year jail sentence at Cardiff Crown Court.

Fatama Jah had hoped to make £10,000 by setting up the robbery, believing the plants were worth about £40,000.

Judge Stephen Hopkins QC told her: "There has been an explosion in the number of cannabis factories found in England and Wales in the last few years, both on an industrial scale and more modestly and equally an increase in offending of this type where the cannabis is stolen.

"They are becoming a regular feature of crown court business."

Jah, whose mother cares for her children, aged one and two, settled in Cardiff after being given a suspended sentence for robbing a woman in Essex earlier this year, said prosecutor John Warren.

She was living at Cheshire Close, Llanishen, but visited a friend at nearby Trenchard Drive, where jobless father of one and tattoo designer David Cosh - who was yesteday also jailed for growing the illegal drug -had a flat, no income and a £100-a-month cannabis habit.

Judge Hopkins said Cosh couldn't resist showing off his plants, which were being grown in a sophisticated set-up of lights with plastic sheets covering the walls and a charcoal filter system to reduce the smellin the property.

Jah said she saw 40 plants when she was invited into the flat and made to promise she would tell no-one.

But Cosh, who was jailed for eight months for growing the illegal drug, denied she had ever been inside and said he only had 27 plants, which would have been worth about £10,000, all for his own use.

Cosh was forced to sleep on a sofa while they occupied his bedroom.

"He doesn't work because he doesn't like people telling him what to do," said his barrister Peter Harding-Roberts. "But he will do any work ordered by the court if his sentence can be suspended."

The judge told Cosh the fact the 29-year-old had been robbed and injured was only because he had been committing a crime in the first place.

Cosh's barrister, Peter Harding-Roberts, said he was still angry about what Jah had done to him - calling two accomplices from London who hid while she knocked at his door and then rushed in.

Cosh was terrified when he saw they had knives and was put to the floor in his bathroom and repeatedly stamped on by one robber, who held onto the sink to steady himself as the attack continued.

The other cleared the flat of the cannabis plants while Jah, who led them to the door, had already fled and called police because she was also terrified.

Jah said she did not know they would be armed. The final stabbing of Cosh in his buttock was said to have been simply gratuitous violence.

Jah admitted robbery, while Cash pleaded guilty to producing cannabis. The prison term against Jah was later reduced to six-and-a-half years because of confusion over her past court records.

Cosh, whose girlfriend and son live in another flat in the same block, was ordered to serve his sentence immediately. Judge Hopkins said it was inappropriate to suspend the sentence while asking a "work-shy man to do unpaid work".

Judge Stephen Hopkins QC who had given her five and a half years for the cannabis robbery and actived what was believed to have been an 18 month term but was in fact 12 months, previously suspended for robbing a woman in Essex earlier this year, said her crimes had actually deserved a full seven years.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk 21/09/2013