Jamie Acourt: Man suspected in Stephen Lawrence case admits role in £4m drug plot

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A man previously suspected in the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence will be sentenced today after he admitted being a kingpin in a £4m drugs plot.

Jamie Acourt, 42, from Eltham in southeast London, pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court on Thursday over the two-year conspiracy to sell cannabis resin.

Acourt had previously denied the conspiracy to supply a class B drug between January 2014 and February 2016, but changed his plea on Thursday following the end of the prosecution’s case opening.

The basis of his plea was that it was agreed with the prosecution he was involved in the conspiracy to supply between 1 January 2014 and 2 May 2015 only.

His 43-year-old brother Neil Acourt has already been jailed for more than six years over the hashish scheme.

Prosecutors believe both brothers were ringleaders and that they enlisted family members to the scheme that saw drugs transported between London and South Shields, Tyne and Wear.

Acourt had spent more than two years on the run until his arrest in May, during which he lived in Spain under the alias Simon Alfonzo.

He fled the country after police raided the home where he lived with his partner and their two children in Bexley, southeast London, in February 2016.

He was arrested by armed officers as he left a gym in Barcelona on 4 May 2018 and extradited back to Britain.

Both Acourts were arrested after the racist stabbing of 18-year-old Stephen by a gang of white men in Eltham in 1993, but have always denied involvement.

Jurors were earlier told of the historical allegation and warned they should consider him solely on the trial’s evidence.

PA