Omar El-Nachar pleads guilty to 160g Adelaide River meth haul

The mother of a Sydney drug addict gifted her troubled son $16,000 so he could start his life afresh in Darwin, only to see him blow the lot on as much meth as he could lay his hands on.

Omar El-Nachar, 28, was busted with 160g or meth at Adelaide River in March

THE mother of a Sydney drug addict gifted her troubled son $16,000 so he could start his life afresh in Darwin, only to see him blow the lot on as much meth as he could lay his hands on.

Omar El-Nachar, 28, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court on Friday to unlawfully possessing a commercial quantity of methamphetamine.

Police searched El-Nachar’s Mitsubishi Outlander when he pulled into the BP petrol station at Adelaide River in March this year, where they found the drugs stashed inside a black plastic case, inside a sports sock, inside a green Nike backpack.

The methamphetamine, which El-Nachar purchased from an unknown source in Sydney, totalled 160g, four times the threshold for a commercial quantity.

El-Nachar’s lawyer, Peter Maley, said his client, who appeared in court with a black eye, was set upon in prison on Monday and may need to have surgery to fix a broken right cheek bone.

“He was assaulted on Monday, he was set upon by two people who kicked and punched him in stomped on him,” Mr Maley said.

He said his client was serving time in a section of the Holtze prison where inmates are locked in their cells 23 hours a day, with no books, no TV and no Koran.

“He has done his period in prison extremely tough,” Mr Maley said.

He said El-Nachar had been self-medicating with methamphetamine, although Crown Prosecutor Collette Dixon said she did not accept that could have been the case, since meth “tends to fire people up”.

“Anti-psychotic drugs tend to be calming,” Ms Dixon said.

Mr Maley said his client had told him he planned to use the entire 160g of the drug himself, but would not be getting into the witness box to give evidence to that effect.

“He says to me that he doesn’t really know anyone in Darwin who is into meth,” Mr Maley said.

Mr Maley said El-Nachar’s mum gave her son $16,000 “for a new start” in Darwin, away from bad influences in Sydney.

“He’s effectively wasted the money on drugs, in his phrase, ‘I’ve ripped my mum off’,” Mr Maley said.

Chief Justice Michael Grant will sentence El-Nachar on Tuesday.