AN ALBANIAN illegal immigrant caught with cocaine worth £380,000 told police he was paying off his debt to the people who smuggled him into the country.

Arber Jakllari, of no fixed address, was jailed for three-and-a-half years on Thursday by a judge in Oxford Crown Court.

The 29-year-old admitted possessing cocaine, a Class A drug, with intent to supply and possessing a false identity document with improper intent.

Passing sentence Judge Gordon Risius, the Honorary Recorder of Oxford, said that Jakllari used to be a successful theatre actor when he lived in Albania.

He said he had agreed to pay people smugglers in the Albanian capital Tirana 6,000 Euros to get him to England to pursue his acting dream in this country.

Judge Risius added that Jakllari had arrived in the UK in February this year but couldn’t pay off his debt so he was forced to work for the gang, driving around other illegal migrants.

In June a man asked him to drive three packages, which he believed contained the Class B drug cannabis, across Oxford, the judge said. He was stopped by the police and was found to be carrying a false Italian passport and three kilos of high-purity cocaine, a Class a drug, with a street value of £380,000.

Judge Risius said all the information about his background had come from Jakllari himself, but the prosecution had accepted it was true.

He said to the defendant: “I accept that you achieved success in the theatre in Albania and that you wanted to live your dream in this country.

“But you went about it in the wrong way by entering this country illegally.

“I also accept that you were a man of previous good character. But I can’t overlook the amount and quality of the cocaine found and your knowledge that it was an illegal drug, albeit of a different type, or the amount of damage done by people who deal in controlled drugs, even those such as yourself who are under real pressure to do so.”

He sentenced Jakllari to three and a half years in prison and said he would then be deported back to Albania.

The defendant was also ordered to pay a £120 victims’ surcharge.