A British drug mule who imported more than $125,000 of crack cocaine has had his sentence increased from four years to six.

Jamie Edward Cox, of Altenkessel, Germany, was convicted by a jury in October last year of importing cocaine and cannabis resin to Bermuda.

He was acquitted of the two other charges of possessing those drugs with intent to supply and handed the four-year jail term by Puisne Judge Charles-Etta Simmons in December.

The jury at the trial had heard how Cox, now aged 28, was stopped by Police Narcotics Department officers at Bermuda International Airport on July 20, 2003 after arriving on a Continental Airlines flight.

It was later found that he had ingested 66 pellets of cocaine, crack cocaine and cannabis resin with a street value of $125,750.

In a written judgment handed down in the Appeals Court on Friday President Anthony Evans said the judge had been scrupulously fair in her summing up but had been clearly troubled by the jury?s verdicts.

Cox had argued that he had swallowed the drugs under duress in Jamaica because gun-totting thugs had threatening his life and that of his daughter.

So he planned to get to the UK, via Bermuda, and throw himself on the mercy of authorities and try to get his daughter safely back.

The Appeals Court ruled that the judge was wrong to cite accidental importation cases, where drug mules had become ill and had their flights diverted, in guiding her sentencing on the simple possession charge.

The Appeals Court said Cox had made a deliberate decision to come to Bermuda and that in commercial crack importation cases the starting point was rarely less than 12 years and that Cox?s sentence was manifestly inadequate.

Accepting the judge had faced an unusual and difficult situation in the sentencing the Appeals Court quashed the four-year sentence and replaced it with a six-year sentence.

Cox had been due for release and deportation within the next four months, having served nearly two thirds of his sentence including time in custody after his arrest.