Two Slovak nationals jailed, fined for cultivating three cannabis plants

Two young Slovak nationals have been jailed for 6 months and fined €720 each after a court found them guilty of cultivating three cannabis plants.

David Strba, 18 and Zdenk Klein, 23, both residents of Mellieha, were arrested last July after the police Drugs Squad raided their apartment and found the plants on the roof together with paraphernalia used in the consumption of marijuana. Photographs of the cannabis plants were also found on the mobile phones of those present.

Strba and Klein had pleaded not guilty to the charges, saying that they had used cannabis in the past, but denied growing the plants seized. Their flatmate, Martin Cabejsek, told the court that the plants had been sown by a previous tenant who had shared the flat with them but who had since returned to his country of origin.

The court had noted that “from the evidence it was clear that it was not the two accused who planted the illegal flora, however it concluded that the fact that they had watered them amounted to cultivation in terms of the law and found them guilty.

The sentence will inevitably draw comparisons to that handed down to Welshman Daniel Holmes, who was jailed for 10 years and fined €23,000 after he admitted to growing five cannabis plants, a sentence confirmed on appeal. 

Holmes was subsequently awarded €7,000 by the Constitutional Court late last year, in compensation for “intolerable delays” in the seven-year compilation of evidence.