A DRUG dealer was last night starting a nine-year jail sentence for supplying heroin around the region.

Robert Kelly, 40, was told by a judge that the evidence against his high-ranking involvement in the illegal trade was unassailable.

He was arrested along with his mother, Frances, and asylum-seeker Ubium Dibra when police raided her house in Hornby Close, Middlesbrough, on November 14 last year and found £40,000 worth of drugs.

On what was to be the first day of his trial at Teesside Crown Court, on Monday, Kelly admitted possessing heroin with intent to supply, possessing amphetamine with intent to supply and possessing heroin.

His 60-year-old mother was formally cleared of allowing her home to be used for drug dealing, and possessing amphetamine, when the prosecution offered no evidence against her.

Albanian refugee Dibra, 20, who denied the same three charges, was cleared by a jury at the end of a three-day trial.

But he was sentenced for possessing a stun gun, and for his part in an affray, to which he pleaded guilty.

Kelly, of Wicklow Street, Middlesbrough, was still on licence from a five-year sentence for drug dealing when he was arrested last year and must serve 102 days of that before his nine-year term starts.

Kelly's barrister, Kevin Metzger, said he had pleaded guilty on the basis that the drugs had been delivered to his mother's house shortly before the police arrived and he believed he had been set up.

"He is a very remorseful man, particularly bearing in mind how his family were dragged into this from the day of the arrest," said Mr Metzger.

Dibra, of Falkland Street, Middlesbrough, was given a community punishment order for 200 hours for the affray - an attack with two others on a taxi driver in November 2002 - and possessing an offensive weapon, which was found under his bed after the drugs raid.

Judge Fox also recommended that he be deported.