Two French pilots convicted for their role in a spectacular 2013 drugs bust on a private jet in the Dominican Republic were acquitted on appeal by a French court Thursday.
The two men had been sentenced to six years in prison in what had become known as the “Air Cocaine” case, an attempt to smuggle 680 kilograms of the drug out of the country.
Pascal Fauret and Bruno Odos had always denied they knew the cocaine was on board the flight.
A key figure in the affair, who did not appeal his own conviction, said the two pilots had been “conned.”
The court freed the two pilots, but upheld the sentences of the directors of the aviation company, and Ali Bouchareb, the man accused of being behind the drug trafficking scheme.
In March 2013, Dominican police found the narcotics packed into 26 suitcases on board a Falcon 50 jet as it prepared to fly from the Dominican beach resort of Punta Cana to Saint-Tropez in the south of France.
While out on bail, the two pilots managed to flee the Dominican Republic to French territory in the Caribbean in mysterious circumstances, but were re-arrested upon their return to the French mainland in November 2015.