Bilal Omari: MDMA importer faces jail after falling in with “bad boy” cousin’s drug syndicate
A former university staffer who was involved in a drug importing syndicate is facing jail time, with his emotional mother saying she tried to stop him hanging out with his “bad boy” cousins.
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A Canberra university staffer who took part in a major drug syndicate — orchestrated behind bars — now faces a jail stint himself, with his distraught mother saying everything started to go wrong when he hung out with his “bad boy” cousins.
Bilal Badr-Eddeen Omari faced the ACT Supreme Court on Tuesday where Commonwealth prosecutor Tom Jones told the court Omari should be locked up over his role in a drug syndicate which imported 2.2kg of MDMA in paint tins.
Omari has previously pleaded guilty to importing a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug.
“It’s not an exceptional case,” Mr Jones said.
“Mr Omari willingly participated and took an active role in importing an illegal drug into this country from overseas.”
He said it would be “manifestly inadequate” if Justice Chrissa Loukas-Karlsson handed Omari an intensive corrections order, meaning he would serve a jail sentence in the community.
Court documents reveal Omari’s key role in the syndicate, as a middle-man between its financier, Canberra builder Youssef Jabal and mastermind, prisoner Emin Yavuz.
Omari, who worked at the Australian National University College of Business and Economics, was the target of phone taps, in which police recorded Omari telling Jabal that Yavuz wanted “fifty grand or something”.
Jabal, who has a Lamborghini and a Ferrari in his garage, told Omari he couldn’t come up with the cash because it was invested in a property development at Weetangera.
Prosecutors dropped charges against Jabal relating to the MDMA shipments, but he has pleaded guilty to being knowingly concerned with Omari’s seperate cocaine trafficking and will be sentenced at a later date.
The court has previously heard the syndicate’s elaborate plans came unstuck when they “seemed to forget they were being recorded” in phone calls to the jailed Yavuz.
The drugs were ultimately delivered to Omari’s university under the false names “Daniel Tompkins” and “Michael Foster”
Shortly after a shipment of drugs arrived, Omari rang Yavuz in jail and said he had “very good news”.
Prosecutors have previously described Omari as using the university as “his own personal drug storage location”.
Omari was ultimately the target of a police raid in December 2017, which Jabal unsuccessfully tried to foil.
Omari’s mother, Yusra Omari, told the court on Tuesday she felt “something was going on” in 2016 when her son regularly stopped having dinner at home and was spending time hanging out with his “bad boy” cousins, the Jabals.
“He started mixing with them too much,” she said. “I heard a lot about them, they are not good boys, they are bad boys.”
The overseas supplier is known only as “Mr Sock”.
Omari’s barrister, AJ Karim, said his client had not been in trouble with the law since late 2017, was in a steady relationship in Canberra and should be able to serve his jail time in the community.
Justice Loukas-Karlsson will sentence Omari at a later date.