A VIETNAMESE manr was jailed yesterday after police caught him working as a gardener in a cannabis house.

Quy Ly was put behind bars for almost two years after he was arrested in a raid on a cannabis factory in Wood Farm, Oxford.

The 33-year-old helped produce an estimated £100,000 of a super-potent skunk version of the drug.

Judge Tom Corrie branded Ly, who had a failed asylum application, a small cog in a larger drugs operation.

The court heard Ly was promised a job in a hotel, but found himself watering 283 cannabis plants in a house in Titup Hall Drive, yards from Wood Farm Primary School.

Claire Tucker, prosecuting, told Oxford Crown Court yesterday that police raided the house on March 19.

Officers found every room, apart from the kitchen and bathroom, filled with mature cannabis plants.

The electricity meter reading had been changed. Southern Electric estimated it had cost £7,000 to provide enough power to heat the plants.

Miss Tucker said: "The street value was in the region of £94,000."

Richard Fisher, defending, said Ly had fled his native Vietnam fearing for his life after being arrested for opposing the Communist regime.

He paid human traffickers to get from Cambodia to France, then made his way to Britain where he applied for asylum.

But Ly's application was unsuccessful and he became an overstayer living in London. In March, he met a friend named only as 'Kyun', who promised him work in a hotel in Oxford.

He was driven to Titup Hall Drive, dumped in the house and told he could not work in the hotel because he was an illegal immigrant. However, he was told he would be paid to water the cannabis plants.

Ly, who has two disabled children in Vietnam, sobbed as Mr Fisher described how he was abandoned to water the plants.

Mr Fisher said Ly did not know the plants were cannabis for two weeks.

"It is clear others were involved in this offence. Clearly they have evaded capture. He was by no means the substantial beneficiary of this money making operation. He was only paid £50."

Mr Fisher said the house was rented to a woman called Yan Wang who said she was sharing it with students at Oxford Brookes University in October last year.

Judge Corrie jailed Ly, of Delawich Road, Peckham, London, for 21 months.

He also recommended his deportation to Vietnam.

He said: "I have to accept that you are a smallish cog in a larger operation.

"But you were important because you were the gardener. Without you, the operation would not have succeeded."

Police drugs co-ordinator PC Leigh Thompson said: "A lot of these people are exploited.

"They are promised jobs and houses and when they come over here, they are often unfortunately landed in a house that grows cannabis, told what to do, and probably there is violence too.

"We are arresting them, but it doesn't stop there.

"We are working with other forces across the country to find the people behind this."