An ordained minister who pleaded guilty to importing crack cocaine in his stomach, began serving a seven-year sentence at Westgate Correctional Facility yesterday.

Hopeton George Brown, 38, of Jamaica, was apprehended at Bermuda International Airport on December 18, 2001 as he entered the Island. According to Brown, he was coming to Bermuda to attend to business matters.

A clergyman for some 16 years, Brown was taken to King Edward VII Memorial Hospital to be x-rayed after Police narcotics officers at the Airport found nothing in a personal search.

At the hospital, a foreign substance was discovered in his stomach.

It was later revealed that Brown had swallowed 140 pellets wrapped in plastic containing cocaine freebase, valued at over $297,000.

Crown prosecutor Oona Vaucrosson recommended that he receive a prison sentence of between six and eight years.

"Although Brown was not a supplier, but a drug mule... he is solely responsible for importing the drugs into Bermuda," she said.

Asking that his guilty plea be taken into consideration, defence counsel Elizabeth Christopher requested her client, an ordained minister since 1995, receive a sentence on the lower end of the range.

Before sentencing, Brown told Assistant Justice Charles-Etta Simmons that he was extremely remorseful for his actions and that hard economic times had caused him to commit the crime.

Brown was to receive between up to $10,000 for bringing the drugs to the Island.

He said: "I am really sorry for bringing drugs to Bermuda. I didn't know which drugs they were until I was in jail. "I don't use drugs so I didn't know the effects of them. Once I read about them, I felt even sorrier."

The church elder added that he was under financial pressure as all three of his children were approaching their birthdays and his anniversary was around the corner at the time but he couldn't afford to buy gifts.

"I didn't have the money to do that, so I felt pressured. I'm sorry about it."

Assistant Chief Justice Charles-Etta Simmons told the man: "I am always amazed to hear that couriers have children... Had you been successful, you would have tried again."