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Appeals Court Orders New Trial In Drug Conspiracy Case

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 20, 2008

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• Appeals Court's Findings

Christopher Benbow

TAMPA - The case, a federal appeals court said, "began like something out of a James Bond novel."

The U.S. investigation of a British national that started with a proposal to sell a component for dirty bombs "morphed into an international drug conspiracy sting," the appeals court said.

This week, the court overturned the drug conspiracy conviction of Christopher Benbow, 64, who was sentenced last year in Tampa to life in prison.

The case began when Benbow, who was living in Estonia, approached a friend in Miami he thought had ties to the U.S. government.

Benbow said he knew Russians trying to sell three canisters of strontium 90, a radioactive isotope that can be used to make a "dirty bomb."

What followed included a December 2003 meeting in Tampa in which Benbow asked for $250 million for each canister, saying he wanted to get the substance off the world market and make a profit in the process.

Benbow didn't know it, but the men he met with were government informants. The meeting was captured on video by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

During the Tampa meeting, Benbow told the two men he had a friend with connections to former KGB officers who were selling 9 kilograms of the radioactive isotope obtained in Kazakhstan.

Benbow said his sources were negotiating to sell the material to a group in Afghanistan.

The informants steered the transaction toward drugs, telling Benbow they didn't have the kind of money he wanted for the strontium 90. One of the informants, who used the name David Siegel and said he was Israeli, asked Benbow whether his sources would accept drugs instead.

Benbow wound up contacting people tied to British organized crime and negotiating the sale of cocaine destined for the streets of Europe.

Benbow eventually was arrested and convicted of conspiracy to possess more than 5 kilograms of cocaine with intent to distribute.

But a federal appeals court Monday ordered a new trial, ruling that the trial court should have instructed jurors that to convict, they had to find that the object of the conspiracy was either possession or distribution of the drug within the United States.

The court held that a reasonable jury with the proper instruction could have found that Benbow conspired to possess, if not distribute, cocaine within the United States.

Benbow's attorney, Kenneth Siegel, declined to comment this afternoon on the appeals court ruling.

Reporter Elaine Silvestrini can be reached at (813) 259-7837 or esilvestrini@tampatrib.com.

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