Bilal Omari: court hears of Canberra drug gang’s telephone blunder that led to demise
A gang discussing making big bucks importing party drugs, including a serving prisoner, knew their calls using the jailhouse phone system were being recorded but slipped up from their “cryptic” conversations, a court has heard.
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A Canberra prisoner and a group of his mates engineered a scheme to make big bucks importing party drugs but came unstuck when they seemed to “forget that they were being recorded” on the jail’s telephone system, a court has heard.
One of the men, Bilal Badr-Eddeen Omari, fronted the ACT Supreme Court on Tuesday where his barrister AJ Karim argued the plan to import drugs grew only after his client had become involved.
Omari has previously pleaded guilty to drug importation.
Barrister Darren Renton, prosecuting, said Omari, who was working at the Australian National University, used the university “as his own personal drug storage location”.
Omari was the target of a police raid in December 2017, and police were listening in when his Lamborghini-driving cousin, Youssef Jabal, made a ham-fisted attempt to foil a search of Omari’s car.
Mr Renton said the evidence showed Omari’s role was “more than being a postbox” but was “not on the same footing” as the prisoner Emin Yavuz.
He said it would make little difference to Omari’s sentence even if the smaller drug operation he thought he was getting involved in grew larger, because he remained a part of it.
The jailhouse phone calls with Yavuz largely used “cryptic” language, the courts have heard, but Mr Renton said the people talking would occasionally slip up.
Justice Chrissa Loukas-Karlsson said: “I never cease to be surprised that people occasionally seem to forget that they were being recorded” when speaking to prisoners at Canberra’s jail, the Alexander Maconochie Centre.
The case, originally involving five men facing a combination of 14 charges including money laundering, drug importation, has been dragging through the courts since late 2017, as some of the charges have fallen away.
The drugs came from Germany, and were sourced from a man referred to in court only as “Mr Sock”.
Justice Loukas-Karlsson will begin sentencing Omari in July.