Former soldier Lance Whitmore, from Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, who has been given a 50 year jail sentence in Thailand for drug dealing (Picture: NTI)

An ex-British soldier has been jailed for 50 years in Thailand for drug dealing.

Lance Whitmore, 27, was arrested with an Australian friend in the beach resort Pattaya, where the pair were found to have 200 ecstasy pills on them.

He was told he would receive no parole on the heavy sentence, meaning he will be 77 years old when he is released from prison.

After police first arrested Whitmore 10 months ago they immediately searched his friend’s flat, where they found another 60 pills.


He spent three days shackled in a ‘safe house’ before being sent to the infamous Klong Prem Central Prison in Bangkok, sometimes known as the ‘Bangkok Hilton’.



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A prison officer stands guard with a baton in the sleeping quarters of Bangkok’s Klong Prem Prison (Picture: STEPHEN SHAVER/AFP/Getty Images)

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Whitmore’s family hoped the court would give him a smaller sentence after learning that his fiancé Jitma Tahin, 25, died of meningitis months before his arrest.

His father, who runs a bar in Pattaya, broke down in tears as his son was led to the cells after having his sentenced passed.

Russell, 54 said: ‘I was in court for the sentence. I was hoping for a much shorter sentence and I’m totally devastated. It’s horrendous.

‘We are trying to organise an appeal but the British Embassy is next to useless. They are scared of the Thai Government.’

He said Lance was ‘doing dreadfully inside’, and described the Thai prisons as ‘worse than a POW camp’.

‘There are cockroaches everywhere and they feed the prisoners rotten rice and fish heads,’ he added.

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His family claim Whitmore’s ‘basic human rights’ have been denied (Picture: NTI)

Russell even claims the prisoners are forced to sleep on a concrete floor, and that the towels he gave his son to sleep on were taken away by guards because they were ‘too comfortable’.

Up to 30 people share a single cell in the Bangkok prison, where drug addiction and AIDs are rife.

Speaking in March, Lance’s mum Debbie Caswell, 51 said: ‘He has done wrong, but there is a reason he got mixed up in all that, everything that was going on.’

His family, who have spent thousands on legal fees and are now asking for donations to fund their appeal against Lance’s sentence, claim that evidence used in Lance’s trial had been tampered with and that he has been denied his basic human rights.