2nd Alta. man pleads guilty in N.W.T. drug bust
Last Updated: Monday, November 23, 2009 | 10:29 AM CT
CBC News
One of three Alberta men arrested in a major drug bust in Yellowknife last year has pleaded guilty to drug trafficking.
Ali Ashraf, 23, of Fort McMurray, Alta., was sentenced in an N.W.T. court last week after he pleaded guilty to possessing half a pound of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking.
The Crown withdrew four other charges he was facing in exchange for the guilty plea, making him the second of the Alberta trio to reach a plea bargain with prosecutors.
The court sentenced Ashraf to time served, as he had been in jail for two months before he was released on $15,000 bail. Ashraf was also fined $4,000.
"In this case, this individual waived his preliminary hearing, pled guilty and had no criminal record," Glen Boyd, the prosecutor handling Ashraf's case, told CBC News.
"You arrive at what an appropriate range is, based on what the courts have indicated is an appropriate sentence in these types of cases."
RCMP seized crack, pot, cash, gun
Ashraf was arrested in November 2008, along with Adrian Graves and Mohammed Jomha, after RCMP searched three homes in downtown Yellowknife and seizing one kilogram of crack cocaine, 3½ kilograms of marijuana, a .45-calibre semi-automatic handgun, and more than $5,000 in cash.
At the time of the arrests, Yellowknife RCMP said the seized drugs amounted to about 9,000 hits of crack cocaine and 18,000 marijuana cigarettes.
Each of the three was charged with one count of trafficking in narcotics, two counts of possession for the purpose of trafficking narcotics and one count of possession of the proceeds of crime.
Graves pleaded guilty in August to possessing 70 grams of crack cocaine for the purpose of trafficking, as well as possession of the proceeds of crime.
Graves was sentenced to two years in jail, but the judge halved the amount of time he had left to serve, giving him one year's credit for the eights months he had spent in jail before he was sentenced.
No trial date has been set for Jomha, who was released three weeks following his arrest after posting $30,000 bail.
