An asylum seeker caught in south Essex with eight wraps of cocaine declared his love for Britain as he walked free with a fine.
Mohammad Alturk gave the Echo a smile and a thumbs up outside Basildon Crown Court, declaring: “All the best for all British! Love!”
Originally from Jordan, the court heard he arrived in the United Kingdom in July 2024 and his asylum application was currently “frozen”, pending the outcome of the case.
Alturk, 39, now living in Hinckley, Leicestershire, was caught with the drugs in Rayleigh on December 4 last year.
The court heard police spotted a BMW 3 series late at night and realised Alturk – then living in Southend – was not the insured driver.
They watched him drive “erratically” along Crown Hill towards London Road, before taking “a sudden, unindicated right turn into Down Hall Road”.
He “took off at speed,” said sentencing judge Recorder Suki Daddha, and “failed to stop for the officers, who had their sirens and lights on.”
As he tried to evade them, they saw him throw a plastic bag out of the car window.
Once retrieved, it was found to contain eight wraps of cocaine, one of which had been opened and used.
Alturk was apprehended when he turned into a cul de sac. He told officers he had just purchased the drugs for £500 for his own use.
He was using two to three wraps per day at that time, he claimed.
It later transpired he had been picked up under similar circumstances two months earlier in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
In both instances, he was initially suspected of drug dealing but ultimately dealt with for simple possession.
The Oxfordshire case ended with a community resolution, meaning he was never charged.
Alturk pleaded guilty on Thursday (August 20) at Basildon to possession of cocaine and driving without insurance. He told the court it had been a friend’s car.
Unrepresented by a lawyer, he told Recorder Daddha he turned to drugs during a period of poor mental health and stress.
“I thought it would help me but it didn’t,” he said. “I became sick. I couldn’t sleep.”
He said he had now stopped using them.
Recorder Daddha fined him £120. He must also pay a statutory £48 court surcharge.
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