Drug dealers who supply to killers to receive heavy jail terms: election promise

DEALERS selling ice and other drugs to addicts who then go on to kill would receive heavy jail terms under a Coalition government. It comes after ice addicts were allegedly behind three horrific rampages in Melbourne this year.

EXCLUSIVE: Dealers selling ice and other drugs to addicts who then go on to kill would receive heavy jail terms under a Coalition government.

Opposition Leader Matthew Guy has promised that if he is elected next year, he would introduce laws under which those who supply drugs to people responsible for “mass casualty events” and other murders would face mandatory jail terms.

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Prison terms would start at a 10-year minimum and would not be able to be served concurrently with any other sentence.

Ice addicts are alleged to have been behind three horrific rampages this year in which eight people were killed and dozens injured.

Dimitrious Gargasoulas, who is accused of mowing down people in Bourke St in January, killing six, had reportedly been a heavy user of the drug for years.

Terrorist Yacqub Khayre, who was shot dead by police in June, had a decade-long history of ice use before he executed an apartment worker and held an escort hostage during a siege at Brighton.

Accused Bourke St driver Dimitrious Gargasoulas, alleged Flinders St rampager Saeed Noori and Brighton terrorist Yacqub Khayre.

Saeed Noori, accused of attempting to murder 18 people while driving along Flinders St last Thursday, was also an ice user with mental health problems, according to police.

Families of victims killed by ice users have welcomed the plan, saying the justice system must crack down on drug dealers.

Nick Doyle, whose stepdaughter Kara Doyle was shot dead by her ­aggressive, ice-addicted boyfriend Mehmet Torun in 2013, said it would act as a good deterrent.

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“Dealers deserve to be punished. They are at the very start of it (violence) and are sometimes just as bad,” he said.

“It’s devastating for families of people killed or deranged by drugs. A deterrent is a good idea.”

Relatives of murdered young mother Maddison Murphy-West also flagged their support for the proposed “dealing in death” laws.

Kara Doyle was shot by her ice-addicted boyfriend.

Young mum Maddison Murphy-West was murdered.

Ms Murphy-West’s ice-addicted boyfriend Troy Boothey, who remains the main suspect over her death, was caught on a drug-fuelled bender weeks after her lifeless body was found in her Pakenham home on October 23, 2013.

Her aunt, Kelly-Anne Murphy, said: “Drug dealers are being let off too easily. There needs to be consequences.

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“They know the consequences of selling drugs and what it can lead to. They are an accessory as far as I’m concerned.”

Mr Guy said it was time for those who sold ice to people who then went on to commit major atrocities to be punished heavily for their role in those atrocities.

“This new law will hold drug dealers accountable for their actions and for the catastrophic effect of dealing illicit drugs,” Mr Guy said.

Opposition Leader Matthew Guy’s election promise aims to punish dealers for their role in major atrocities. Picture: Nicole Garmston

“More of the same soft laws will not stamp out mass-casualty, ice-related crime. Only a tough new approach will.”

Widespread use of the drug ice and its links to high-level violent crime remains one of the major problems for law and order in Victoria.

The highly addictive drug has been linked to almost all of the murders in the Geelong area in the past five years.

The Coalition plan would require proof that the drugs sold contributed to the criminal act, and that whoever sold them knew, or should have known, that there was a reasonable likelihood that the buyer of the drugs would commit a criminal act.

Shadow attorney-general John Pesutto said that proving the link between the dealer and the buyer’s crime would be difficult, and he did not expect the law would result in great numbers of prosecutions.

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“Are there going to be hundreds of cases? No. But where it (the link) can be made clear, let’s go after them,” he said.

“They should feel the full force of the law.”

He said that where offenders tried to blame drug use, they should be required to identify their supplier.

“Ice dealers should not only pay a hefty price for trafficking in illicit drugs, they should spend time in jail for the devastation innocent people suffer at the hands of ice-fuelled violent offenders,” he said.

“Under our plan, not only will offenders continue to feel the full force of the law, but those fuelling their addiction and violent acts will also have to answer for their part in attacks against innocent Victorians,” Mr Pesutto said.

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