"CANNABIS GARDENERS" ARE JAILED

Three men who were hired as "cannabis gardeners" in a £230,000-a-year drugs factory have been jailed.

They were hired hands recruited to cultivate and harvest skunk - a super-strength variety of the drug - at a rented house in Leicester.

Police raided it after neighbours reported a strong smell of cannabis coming from the terraced property.

Drugs squad officers discovered a sophisticated set-up at the house, in Filbert Street East, with fans, thermometers, heaters and sodium lights for the 200 plants being grown.

Yesterday Van Minh Le (34), of Kings Road, London, was sentenced to 11 months' imprisonment, after he admitted being concerned in the production of cannabis.

Asylum seekers Pen Jei (24), of Filbert Street East, and Xuan Phuc Pham (22), of Grasmere Street, Leicester, were each jailed for nine months. Both admitted producing cannabis.

They are also being held in detention by the Home Office, which is considering whether Jei, from China, and Pham, from Vietnam, are to be deported after their sentences.

Le, who is married, has been given leave to stay in the UK, Leicester Crown Court was told.