AN ALBANIAN man has been jailed after a bust at a former town centre pharmacy uncovered a cannabis farm growing drugs worth up to a potential half a million pounds.

Dyfed-Powys Police raided at the old pharmacy building – which had been left vacant – on Main Street in Pembroke at around 10am on Friday, October 18.

Inside, the officers found around 575 flowering head cannabis plants growing across three rooms, prosecutor Harry Dickens said.

Amarildo Daja was present at the address and tried to leave through the back door. When he saw the police he retreated inside and “hid inside the ceiling”, Mr Dickens said. Police offered him a ladder to get down, and he was arrested.

“The factory itself is described as being large and being sophisticated – the whole of the first floor being covered,” Mr Dickens said.

There was a living quarters and a shower room inside the property, and it appeared that Daja had been living there to tend to the cannabis. Officers also found that the electricity had been tampered with in an attempt to avoid detection.

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Police seized two mobile phones in the raid, however one had been wiped and the other had been damaged.

A drugs expert estimated that the plants could have produced a yield of between 15 and 45 kilograms of cannabis, which would have had a potential street value of “between £170,000 and just over £500,000”.

In his interview, 27-year-old Daja told the police he had paid a criminal gang to smuggle him in to the UK by lorry. He had worked in London for a time, but was not earning enough to pay his debt off to the gang, so agreed to move to Pembrokeshire and work at the cannabis farm three months prior to his arrest.

He pleaded guilty to being concerned in the production of cannabis.

“The defendant is realistic about receiving an immediate custodial sentence,” said Caitlin Brazel, in mitigation.

She said his offending was “a mistake that he never intends on again repeating” and was “somewhat out of character for him”.

“He is disheartened to have tarnished his good character,” she said.

Ms Brazel added that Daja, of no fixed abode, was keen to serve his sentence and so he can then gain legal employment.

“If we want to bring down the Albanian criminal gangs that set up cannabis factories, we are going to have to find the ringleaders rather than just those who arrive on the back of a lorry,” said Judge Geraint Walters.

“The property in Main Street is – as you would think – on the main street in Pembroke.

“I’d have thought the first thing I would want to know as a policeman is who is the owner, and how do you get your rent paid?”

Judge Walters jailed Daja for 12 months.

“Whether you will be deported upon your release is a matter for the Home Office, not for me,” he added.