Muhammad Muradi pleads guilty to drug trafficking

A drug trafficker who scoffed down bags of cocaine when he was nabbed in the midst of a 4am drug deal outside a popular Geelong pub has learned his fate.

Muhammad Muradi has pleaded guilty to charges including drug trafficking.

A drug trafficker who scoffed down bags of cocaine when he was nabbed in the midst of a 4am drug deal outside a popular Geelong pub has learned his fate.

Muhammad Muradi, 23, appeared in the Geelong Magistrates Court on Monday where he pleaded guilty to charges including drug trafficking and resisting emergency workers.

Magistrate Simon Guthrie told Muradi he was tempted to jail him and warned he faced harsher penalties if he kept breaking the law.

During a bail hearing for Muradi in July, the court heard that police officers were patrolling Thompson Rd at about 4am on June 29 when they noticed a white Audi parked directly opposite a Holden station wagon with its headlights on in the carpark of the Sphinx Hotel.

According to the police summary read out at the bail application, police discovered deal bags in Muradi’s glove box, ketamine in his wallet, three bags of MDMA and 23 bags of cocaine.

During the arrest, Muradi struggled and briefly fled towards Thompson Rd before he was apprehended.

Afterwards, Muradi spat out six plastic bags – the contents having apparently been ingested.

Muradi’s lawyer Tom Edwards told the bail hearing Muradi met the criteria of being a vulnerable adult, but was on two active community corrections orders (CCO) for similar offending.

Muradi was placed on an 15-month order in April last year, followed by a 13-month order in June.

On Monday, the court heard Muradi, who hails from Afghanistan, had been found suitable for another CCO.

Magistrate Simon Guthrie told the court he acknowledged Muradi had enjoyed a “troubled childhood” in which he and his family fled war-torn Afghanistan.

Muradi has an acquired brain injury and was stabbed in 2019, the court heard, and has struggled to hold down work, including short stints as a plasterer and tiler.

Mr Guthrie told Muradi it was a “double standard” to “sell drugs to the innocent” and then turn around and claim to be vulnerable himself.

Mr Guthrie said he understood the family’s hardship and told Muradi his mother was “distressed” over her inability to see him while in custody.

He said there was nothing to indicate Muradi did not understand the previous CCOs when he agreed to them, and asked if he really was remorseful.

“(It) seems to be that you don’t seem to take a lot of regard for the consequences,” Mr Guthrie said.

Mr Guthrie said the offending was “pretty calculated … it takes a bit of effort to traffic drugs … you need to be connected”.

“I don’t know how you get the drugs, but you’re happy to sell them,” Mr Guthrie said.

Muradi was convicted and sentenced to 90 days in jail, with 86 reckoned as time served, to be followed by an 18-month community corrections order upon release.

If he contravened the order he will be jailed, Mr Guthrie said.

“When someone consents to a community corrections order, I expect them to engage,” Mr Guthrie said.

Originally published as Muhammad Muradi pleads guilty to drug trafficking