A man caught on camera dealing drugs in an Aberdeen department store has been jailed.
Chide Masuku was captured on CCTV handing a package to a woman in Debenhams on October 20 last year.
Police later recovered more than £50,000 of cocaine which the 36-year-old had been planning to sell.
Masuku appeared at the city’s sheriff court yesterday after he previously admitted the offence.
Defence agent Kevin Longino told the court that Masuku was “vulnerable” and had been taken advantage of by those further up the chain in the drugs trade.
Mr Longino said his client was forced into dealing himself to pay off a bogus debt.
He told the court that Masuku had fled Zimbabwe as a result of political violence and was too scared to go to the authorities because of his experiences there.
Mr Longino said that Masuku was a “family man” who had never been in trouble prior to his conviction.
Sentencing him to 33 months in prison, Sheriff Graeme Napier said that many people found themselves in Masuku’s position.
He said: “If every time someone is threatened they themselves did something wrong the place would be rife with crime.
“Sometimes people have to make a stand.”
The court previously heard that when Masuku, of Tamworth Street, Oldham, had arrived in the UK he started to work as a handyman but was soon accused of stealing £20,000 from a house he had been working at.
The owner of the house ordered his client to pay back the £20,000, and when he could not he was forced into drug deals.
After staff at the store witnessed him making his exchange, they contacted the police, who managed to trace him in the city centre.
Officers searched Masuku and found a package containing cocaine and a set of keys to a flat in Torry.
When they arrived at the address they discovered the class A drug hidden in packets of porridge.
