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Fake ambulance drugs trial: I'm just a handyman, says alleged right-hand man

The alleged right-hand man in a £1.6 billion conspiracy to smuggle drugs into the UK using fake Dutch ambulances claimed he was only kept around to fix the lights.

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Leonardus Bijlsma said he fixed a broken ambulance heater at an industrial lock-up in Colchester, Essex, where prosecutors alleged packets of drugs were loaded or unloaded.

The 56-year-old also claimed he then fixed a broken interior light when the same ambulance turned up at the hotel he was staying, on a separate occasion.

Asked what he was doing at the Holiday Inn, Colchester, the father-of-four replied: "Yes there was a light that was broken, and I needed to fix it."

Bijlsma is accused of being the 'right-hand man' in 'a lucrative criminal conspiracy' which may have flooded 'staggering' amounts of drugs into the UK, say prosecutors.

But Bijlsma today told a Birmingham Crown Court jury on Tuesday he was paid 250 euro (£176) a time by ambulance company owner Olof Schoon to be his 'co-driver' during 16 trips across the Channel.

The Dutchman said Schoon 'had sleep apnoea' and could fall asleep driving, so took Bijlsma as a back-up driver and also to hunt for scrap cars to use as spares.

He is currently on trial alongside another man charged with drug smuggling after an ambulance riddled with riveted secret compartments was found 'rammed' full of £38 million in cocaine and heroin in June.

Opening the trial last week, prosecution counsel Robert Davies said police had found Bijlsma's DNA on a rivet gun and gloves found in the back of that ambulance.

Bijlsma, in the witness box for first time, said that as the Dutch ambulance yard's handyman he was never allowed in the back of the vehicle as it had to remain 'sterilised'.

He told jurors after washing the ambulance wearing some gloves, he 'put them on a cupboard' back in the Netherlands where lots of staff would have access to them.

Bijlsma claimed his DNA was on the rivet gun, found inside one of the concealed compartments, because he had been to the shop to buy it but denied using it on any of the compartments.

He added: "Nobody was allowed to come into the patient's side of the ambulance because it's sterilised.

"We're not allowed to go into that area."

Bijlsma told the court his 'boss and friend' Schoon, whom the crown have said was 'the central player' in the conspiracy, paid him up to 4,000 euro (£2,800) a month for his services as a one-day-a-week odd-job man.

The jury have already been told Schoon and another man Richard Engelsbel have admitted conspiracy to supply class A drugs into the UK.

Under cross-examination, Bijlsma pleaded his innocence and said: "I say 10 times, I haven't done it. There's no fingerprints there, I haven't done it."

Bijlsma, who claimed he just did oil and windscreen washer fluid changes for Schoon, said he was ignorant as to what the rivets were being used for.

He said: "As you work long in this world, you learn that you don't ask anything."

Bijlsma and co-defendant Dennis Vogelaar, both of Amsterdam, deny conspiracy to smuggle drugs after they were arrested, along with Schoon and Engelsbel, near a scrapyard in Smethwick, in June.

The trial continues.

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