Alan Dickson, 37, from Falkland in Fife, masterminded an operation to smuggle over one million pounds worth of cannabis into Scotland from Spain. In 2002 he was caught and jailed for ten years. However, he allegedly fled Castle Huntly jail four years later. This month he was returned to Scotland after being discovered in the Costa Del Sol. He appeared on petition from custody at Perth Sheriff Court accused of walking out of the jail on 28 December 2006 and spending two years on the run.
He is also accused of defeating the ends of justice by absconding from the jail while serving a ten-year sentence imposed at the High Court in Edinburgh on 5 March 2002. Dickson made a brief appearance in private and made no plea or declaration in relation to the absconding charge. He was fully committed for trial and remanded in custody after making no application for bail. In 2002, the High Court in Edinburgh heard how Dickson was the head of a gang smuggling cannabis to Scotland from his home in holiday resort Torremelinos. Dickson, who was also jailed for five years for drug trafficking in 1997, dispatched couriers with suitcases packed with cannabis resin from his apartment.