AN Albanian man caught guarding a Bradford cannabis factory might have believed the streets of Britain were paved with gold, the judge jailing him said yesterday.

Renato Xhafa, who came to the UK last year via Spain and Belgium, claimed he was manipulated into travelling from his home in London to tend the drugs farm.

Xhafa, 23, previously of Onslow Parade, Barnet, a borough in the north of London, pleaded guilty to production of cannabis at a flat above a shop on Keighley Road in Bradford.

Prosecutor Clare Walsh said he answered the door to the police at 8.30pm on December 14 last year.

A search of the property revealed 45 cannabis saplings under 25 lights.

There were transformers, fans, pumps, filters, plant feed and water butts.

The electricity had been bypassed.

Xhafa was arrested at the scene, Miss Walsh told Bradford Crown Court.

He had £95 in cash on him and he had been shopping for food and electrical goods while guarding the crop, the court heard.

He told the police he did not realise the plants were illegal.

He had been in the country for a year and had no previous convictions here or in his homeland, the court was told.

Xhafa was remanded in custody and sentenced on a video link to Leeds Prison yesterday morning.

His solicitor advocate, Simon Hustler, told the court that his client wanted to remain in the United Kingdom after he had served his prison sentence.

Being behind bars had come as a big shock to Xhafa, the court heard.

He had spent almost three months in custody without being able to speak much English, it was pointed out.

He had no family in England and claimed to have been manipulated into guarding the property and tending to the plants.

Judge Jonathan Rose jailed Xhafa for nine months.

“This wasn’t you being manipulated, it was you being rewarded as a gardener and a guard,” he told him.

Like others, Xhafa had come to Britain thinking the streets were paved with gold and then turned to criminality when he found that they weren’t.

“This was a significant criminal enterprise expected to grow a substantial crop of cannabis to bring great profits,” Judge Rose said.

But such cannabis farms attracted other criminals intent on stealing the crop rather than growing their own, they contributed to the drug problem in Bradford and elsewhere and the bypassing of the electricity supply created danger at the property and neighbouring addresses.

Judge Rose warned Xhafa that if he wanted to stay in the UK he must in future steer clear of further criminal activity.

l Last month, the Telegraph & Argus reported how drug-related crime in Bradford rose by almost 20 per cent in the 12 months to 2021.

It was a year which saw a series of 'large-scale' cannabis farms and trafficking networks dismantled.