A Namibian national has been sentenced to five years in prison by the Seychelles Supreme Court for the offence of conspiracy to import a controlled drug, the Anti-Narcotics Bureau (ANB) said on Wednesday.

The ANB of the Seychelles Police Force said that Petrus Johannes Vermuelen, 31, pleaded guilty to the offence.

The Namibian national was arrested by ANB officers at the Seychelles International Airport on October 26 last year in possession of 694 gramme of cocaine. He arrived on an Ethiopian Airlines flight via South Africa.

ANB said that the time spent on remand will be removed from his five-year sentence.

Vermuelen is the fourth foreign national to be sentenced on a drug-related charge by the Supreme Court this year.

A 52-year-old Tanzanian man was sentenced to nine years in prison for the importation of a controlled drug on May 19. His sentence followed that of Elsie Esther Vambe, 45, sentenced to five years in prison for the importation and trafficking of 1.51kg of heroin and 503.70g of cocaine on March 31.

Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, has a zero-tolerance drug policy and has recently put in place several measures to combat the trafficking of illicit drugs on its shores.