A 34-year-old British performer, whose credits include a popular *EastEnders* spin-off and a Hollywood action film starring Jason Statham, is facing life imprisonment after being charged with orchestrating one of the more brazen recent illicit drug importation attempts in Australian history. Emaa Hussen made her first scheduled appearance in a Sydney courtroom Thursday, following her arrest on charges of attempting to bring a commercial-scale shipment of methamphetamine into the country from West Africa.
Australian law enforcement authorities allege Hussen worked alongside a South Australian couple to smuggle 320 kilograms of meth hidden inside shipments of charcoal contained in shipping containers that departed Ghana for Sydney. The seizure of the narcotics puts their estimated street value at roughly AU$296 million, equal to approximately US$208 million or £157 million. If convicted on the charges, Hussen faces a maximum sentence of life behind bars. She was previously denied bail during an earlier court hearing and is scheduled to reappearance for further proceedings in August.
Hussen’s acting resume includes a role as the character Naz in *E20*, the youth-focused *EastEnders* spin-off that first premiered on British television in 2010. She also held a supporting role in the 2013 Jason Statham action thriller *Hummingbird*, which was distributed in the United States under the title *Redemption*.
The investigation that led to Hussen’s arrest was launched back in April, when border security officials detected unusual density inconsistencies during scanning of two shipping containers that had arrived at Port Botany in Sydney from Ghana. The containers were officially declared to hold only bags of charcoal, but x-ray scanning revealed the presence of an unidentified white crystalline substance hidden inside the cargo. Subsequent forensic testing confirmed the material was methamphetamine.
Undercover law enforcement personnel monitored the shipment after seizing the drugs, allowing the container to be delivered to a pre-arranged storage facility in Girraween, a suburb in Western Sydney. Police investigations allege Hussen traveled to the storage facility to oversee the unloading process, where several co-conspirators unloaded the charcoal bags containing the drugs before transferring them to a private vehicle. The group then traveled to a residential property in the Sydney suburb of Blacktown, where officers moved in to arrest Hussen. During the arrest, law enforcement seized a number of electronic devices and a handwritten notebook as evidence.
As part of the cross-state investigation, officers also arrested and charged a 30-year-old woman and 32-year-old man in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. The pair are accused of using false identification documents to rent the Sydney storage units where the drug shipment was intended to be delivered before distribution.
In a statement following the arrests, Acting Detective Superintendent Trevor Robinson of the Australian Federal Police highlighted the massive public impact of the seizure, noting that the 320 kilograms of meth would have been split into roughly 3.2 million individual street deals that would have reached communities across Australia. “This seizure keeps hundreds of thousands of deadly illicit drug doses off our streets, and eliminates a huge revenue stream for transnational criminal syndicates,” Robinson said.
Jared Leighton, Superintendent of the Australian Border Force, commended his agency’s officers for their vigilance in detecting the carefully hidden shipment. “Organized criminal groups will go to extraordinary lengths to disguise their illicit contraband, even hiding narcotics in common, everyday goods like charcoal to avoid detection,” Leighton said. “But our highly trained, experienced officers have the skills and technology to see through these deceptive tactics and stop these dangerous drugs before they enter our communities.”