Coke couple to face music in Darwin Thursday

A DARWIN couple who were the local connections for a Colombian cocaine cartel will Thursday morning learn for how long they will be kept apart by prison walls

Damien Barbi (left) and Emma Edbrooke (right) will learn their fate on Thursday. Picture: Supplied

A DARWIN couple who were the local connections for a Colombian cocaine cartel will Thursday morning learn for how long they will be kept apart by prison walls.

Damien Barbi, 37, and his girlfriend Emma Edbrooke, 34, each pleaded guilty in the NT Supreme Court yesterday to commercial drug supply charges.

The couple exchanged loving glances in the dock when Barbi’s barrister, David Edwardson QC, said they were “together still, (only) in spirit of course, because they’re both incarcerated”.

Edbrooke, a former Inpex worker, was released on bail ahead of sentencing today after Crown Prosecutor David Morters SC said a sentence “which results in her immediate release would be appropriate in all the circumstances” given her “relatively peripheral” role in the operation.

Edbrooke had been in jail since June, when detectives asked her to come in to Darwin police station for an informal “chat” and arrested her, shortly after they arrested Barbi.

The couple had been under surveillance for months, in what Mr Morters described as “extensive and patient investigative work” by the joint NT Police and AFP taskforce.

Peter Maley, for Edbrooke, said his client only got involved in the operation because “she developed a relationship with Mr Barbi”.

The court heard Barbi and Edbrooke — acting on Barbi’s request — made Western Union transfers to individuals in Medellin, Colombia.

The packages in which the cocaine was stashed were sent from the United States, typically in the name of an alleged co-offender.

Mr Morters said two higher-ups in the cartel, both German nationals, flew to Darwin in May and met with Barbi in a city hotel room, which police had bugged.

While police listened, the trio discussed the details of previous drug consignments, distribution methods in Darwin, future consignments and how to avoid detection by police.

The Germans left Australia 10 days after arriving, before police could secure an arrest warrant, and have not returned.

A raid on a third alleged co-offender’s house in Moil after police intercepted a delivery from Miami uncovered photos on the third man’s mobile phone of previous parcels of drugs.

Barbi and Edbrooke — whose Stuart Park house was bugged with listening devices — were overheard discussing the distribution of drugs and how to raise money to pay off the Germans.

Justice Graham Hiley will sentence the couple this morning.