A gang which attempted to smuggle 12.5 tonnes of cannabis resin worth £36 million into Britain through Southampton stashed in a rusty tug boat will be sentenced today.

The smugglers were caught after an international operation shadowed the boat as it travelled from Morocco to the River Itchen.

Six men were found guilty earlier this week after a jury at Winchester Crown Court heard that an Israeli organised crime gang employed an eastern European crew to transport the drugs.

The four other gang members, including three Leicester men who were due to receive and distribute the drugs, pleaded guilty at earlier hearings.

Officials monitored the boat during an unscheduled overnight stop off the coast of Larache in Morocco, a notorious den for smugglers.

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Phone records and sea charts recovered during the investigation showed the gang spent several hours waiting offshore overnight.

Once in Britain they linked up with a Leicester drug dealing cell who planned to distribute the drugs.

But undercover officers, who had been watching the gang as they prepared to offload the haul, swooped on the men at their hotels.

Investigators who boarded the Abbira at the American Wharf marina on the River Itchen spent five days recovering 419 bales of cannabis.

The carefully-packaged drugs had been stuffed into tanks designed to hold fresh water, foam for fire fighting and ballast.

The cannabis seizure in April 2008, enough to make some 36 million joints, was one of the largest ever.

It took officials six attempts to dispose of the huge quantity of drugs in a specialist incinerator.

The operation to catch the men was led by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and involved Leicestershire Police, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and the UK Border Agency.

All the men were charged with offences relating to the illegal importation of a class C controlled drug.

Boat captain Israeli Moshe Kedar, 81, gang leader Mordechai Hersh, 67 and Serbian crew members Dragan Stankovic, 54, Goram Otovic, 54, Dusan Mileusnic, 49, and Negovan Jovanovic, 58, were found guilty on Tuesday.

Another gang leader Israeli Yehezkel Srebro, 57, and the three Leicester men - internet entrepreneur Anjum Nazir, 39, and brothers Mohinder Rai, 45, and Baljinder Rai, 41, pleaded guilty at earlier hearings.