Emaa Hussen, 34, who starred in an Eastenders spin off has been charged with attempting to smuggle 320kg of meth into Australia from West Africa

UK actress Emaa Hussen, 34, has been arrested and charged with attempting to smuggle 320kg of methamphetamine into Australia. She appeared in a Sydney court on Thursday, June 18, and the maximum punishment for her alleged crime is a life sentence.

The actress is best known for her role starring as Naz Mehmet in a spinoff of the beloved soap opera EastEnders – E20. She is accused of hiding meth in charcoal bags that were then shipped from Ghana to Australia, with the police uncovering the drugs – that have a street value of £157 million – in Port Botany. Two Adelaide residents were also arrested back in April in relation to the alleged crime. Hussen will be back in court in August, and she has previously been refused bail.

The Mirror takes a look at the life of the 34-year-old actress, and the details of the alleged crime…

Alleged drug smuggling

Border Force Officers had been tipped off to the shipment, which was to be delivered to a storage facility in Girraween – and when acting on the tip they allegedly discovered a “white crystallised substance” in the bags through x-rays, in two different shipping containers. The contents that had come from Ghana had been listed as charcoal bags, but further testing showed the substances were positive for methamphetamine.

The 34-year-old actress is alleged to have supervised some men who set about unpacking these bags, per the BBC, and then driving to a Blacktown residence, where she was later arrested and electronic devices were seized. It has been claimed by investigators that inside this property, they found 32 bags that were identical to the ones the meth had been found inside.

The two other suspects from Adelaide were arrested for allegedly renting the storage facility using false identities.

Local police have said about the massive drug bust: “The seizure of these drugs – with an estimated street value of $296million – has prevented a potential 3.2million deals from reaching Australian streets and demonstrates the AFP’s ability to operate seamlessly across borders.

“Criminal syndicates will go to great lengths to disguise illicit drugs, including embedding them in everyday goods like charcoal, but our highly skilled officers are trained to see beyond these attempts.”

Acting career

Hussen is best known for her role as Naz Mehmet in the Eastenders’ spinoff, E20. She took on the role in 2011 and was a major character in series two of the show. In an interview about the role Hussen describes her character as regularly feeling “very torn” between two, very different worlds, the traditional muslim values of her family and “modern East End life”.

Reflecting on her own experiences, Hussen said, “It’s a very common thing in East London to be a girl from a muslim family and want to do your own thing”.

“I think I got the part because the producers saw something very authentic in me and very real,” Hussen continues, “I did come from a traditional family, but not as strict as she is, so to that extent we are not really alike…but some of her behaviour I don’t really agree with”.

She also starred in the 2013 Jason Statham film, Hummingbird, released as Redemption in other countries, as a prostitute. Her IMDB pages lists her only other credit as starring in The Plot to Bring Down Britain’s Planes in 2012.

Personal life

In an interview with the Guardian in 2015, Hussen talked about her experience coming to London as a refugee in 1999, when she was eight years old. She was born and raised in the Saidiya area of Baghdad, her mum was half-Iranian and after the conflict between the two countries, things became dangers in Iraq for anyone with Iranian ties, she told the newspaper. Her uncles and grandfather were arrested, and her mum fled the country with her children in tow.

“My mum said we were going on holiday for a week. We travelled to Jordan and then to the UK via Doha with fake passports – Mum told me not to talk because I could only speak Arabic and the passports were Danish. We were found out at the British border – thankfully the UK border agency was sympathetic.”

She was enrolled in a Catholic school, and the family struggled financially for a long time. “At first I was embarrassed about being Iraqi. I rebelled as a teenager because I was living in two worlds, and my mother was scared of me becoming too British. Later, I got a tattoo of Iraq and she freaked out.

“When I was older I moved from Brighton to London. There was an Iraqi community there and I could be myself – I could drive; I was independent. It was a lifeline. I started working as an actor.”