Stoke driver jailed three and a half years in Spain over 400 kg cannabis
Spanish police arrested Stoke-on-Trent truck driver Steven Toplass in February 2004 after 400 kg of cannabis was found in his trailer, and a court convicted him that July and sentenced him to three and a half years with a €600,000 fine. Britain's National Crime Squad said he had been an unwitting mule, and he was pardoned and home by June 2006.
Steven Toplass, a truck driver from Stoke-on-Trent, was taken into custody in
Spain in February 2004 after 400 kg of cannabis was found in the trailer he was
driving.[1]In July 2004 a Spanish court convicted him of involvement in
transporting the drugs and sentenced him to three and a half years in prison
with a €600,000 fine.[2][3]He had taken the Spanish delivery as a one-off
while between jobs, his fiancee Diane Downes said.[1]
Britain’s National Crime Squad found Toplass had been used as an unwitting mule
and had no case to answer, and the Crown Prosecutor wrote that there was no
evidential basis to prosecute him as a party to the conspiracy.[3][2]The
Foreign Office passed a legalised translation of that letter to the Spanish
judge, who refused to acknowledge it; minister Douglas Alexander and Toplass’s
MP Robert Flello then discussed the case with Fair Trials Abroad.[2]Freed in
April 2005 to testify for the Crime Squad against a drug gang, he was kept in
prison after a Spanish judge rejected the prosecution service letter as
possibly inauthentic.[4]
In June 2006 Toplass returned home after two years in a Spanish jail with a
full pardon, once it was accepted he knew nothing about the 400 kg.[5]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
Twelve people caught with hashish pellets inside their bodies at the Port of Ceuta accepted plea deals for drug trafficking, with sentences of up to two years suspended in all but one case. The exception, with a prior drug conviction from Algeciras in 2024, entered prison, while hospital checks had confirmed hashish in 11 of the 12 detainees.
Two men accepted prison terms of six years and one day and three years and one day on 11 November 2026 for trafficking drugs from two homes in Salamanca. Police had seized more than 30 kg of hashish there in June 2025, alongside cocaine, MDMA, ketamine and amphetamine.
Section VI of the Cadiz Provincial Court in Ceuta sentenced two men to three years and six months each after they admitted landing 43.52 kg of hashish by semi-rigid boat at El Sarchal in February 2026. Officers recovered two bags with 44 blocks and four tablets after the boat took on water and sank, and each man was also fined 500,000 euros.
Arrested 2Charged 2Cannabis 43.52 kgPrison 3 years and 6 months
A court in Santiago de Compostela sentenced a man to one year in prison and a fine of 2,026 euros for posting 441.5 grams of hashish to Malta in April 2023. He accepted the sentence in an agreement with prosecutors, and the prison term was suspended on condition that he does not reoffend within two years.
