A CANNABIS farmer who forced his way on to a bungalow roof and threatened to kill himself in a lengthy police stand-off has been jailed for two years and three months.

Erajon Sina was caught at the commercial drugs farm on Poplar Grove in Great Horton, Bradford, at 9am on August 20, Bradford Crown Court heard today.

How we reported the drama at the time

Police saw him through the window sitting on a bed at the address and he gestured as if he was coming to answer the door, prosecutor David Webster said.

But he forced his way through the tiles on to the roof and threatened to kill himself with a lump of wood studded with nails that he was holding to his throat.

A police officer tried for almost two hours to talk him down but he refused, saying he was in debt to the tune of £23,000 in Albania and he feared for his family.

Trained police negotiators eventually persuaded him to come down.

Inside the bungalow were 55 large cannabis plants and 232 seedlings. The electricity meter had been bypassed and although there was no food or clothes at the address, Sina appeared to be living in one of the bedrooms.

At the property next door was another cannabis farm, this time with 73 plants in three rooms.

Mr Webster said that in all there were around 400 cannabis plants at the addresses.

Sina, 20, told the police he was an illegal immigrant who had been in Oxford and Liverpool before being made to work at the cannabis farms several weeks earlier.

The court heard he was on post-release supervision after being sent to a young offender institution for six months for dangerous driving.

Sina’s barrister, Lauren Hebditch, said he came to the United Kingdom last year after bor-rowing the money to get here. It was a decision he now deeply regretted.

He said he was coerced to work at the cannabis grows because he feared for the safety of his family in Albania.

Sina was sentenced on a video link to HMP Doncaster where he had been remanded since his arrest.

Recorder Ashley Serr said that he was supposed to be living at a flat in Liverpool while on post-licence supervision. Instead he was staying at the Bradford bungalow to look af-ter the two cannabis farms.

Although he claimed to have been coerced into tending the plants, there was no evidence of that and his family in Albania were apparently safe and well.