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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
2 sentenced in international heroin trafficking [MD]
    #5307575 - 02/16/06 03:50 PM (17 years, 11 months ago)

2 sentenced in international heroin trafficking
February 16, 2006 - baltimoresun.com

A federal judge handed down lengthy prison sentences yesterday to a father and son from Pakistan who spearheaded an international drug trafficking operation responsible for large shipments of unusually pure heroin into Maryland.

The drug conspiracy case took an unexpected turn when federal prosecutors attempted to present new accusations about possible terrorism involvement by Muzaffar Khan Afridi, 59, and Alamdar Khan Afridi, 29, alleging they funded religious schools linked to the Taliban and illegal shipments of radioactive material.

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Defense attorneys immediately objected. "It's almost like a backdoor prosecution," John Chamble, the assistant federal public defender, told the judge.

U.S. District Judge Alexander Williams Jr. agreed, striking references to terrorism from the record. Williams sentenced Muzaffar Afridi to life in prison and his son to 30 years behind bars.

"This is probably the most serious drug case I've seen," the judge said, adding it involved "pure heroin being transported around the world. This is the business of the family."

U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein defended prosecutors' strategy but declined to provide more details about the terrorist reference. "The reason we included this is that we felt that this information would be relevant to the sentence," he said.

Evidence connecting the men to terrorism was never introduced at the four-week trial in December. The U.S. attorney's office submitted the uncharged conduct as part of the presentence investigative reports. The reports are typically not public documents, and lawyers declined to provide a copy to a reporter yesterday.

In a 2003 news conference announcing the indictment against the Afridis, then-Maryland U.S. Attorney Thomas M. DiBiagio said investigators were exploring the possibility of a link to a terrorist operation.

Marc Gregory Hall, a court-appointed defense attorney, said authorities bugged a hotel room in England and caught one of the suspects talking about diverting drug proceeds to Islamic schools and the Taliban. Other tape recordings revealed at least one of the defendants talking about the ability to acquire uranium and plutonium.

The original charges named 11 men in a 22-count federal indictment that described a sophisticated, large-scale heroin operation with conspirators in Pakistan, Thailand, Canada and California and contacts in Silver Spring, Laurel and Alexandria, Va.

Authorities said the group arranged for the sale of more than 40 kilograms of heroin and in one instance agreed in 2002 to trade 1.85 kilograms of heroin for a collection of jewelry.


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Invisibledblaney
Human Being

Registered: 10/03/04
Posts: 7,894
Loc: Here & Now
Re: 2 sentenced in international heroin trafficking [MD] [Re: veggie]
    #5307688 - 02/16/06 04:30 PM (17 years, 11 months ago)

Marc Gregory Hall, a court-appointed defense attorney, said authorities bugged a hotel room in England and caught one of the suspects talking about diverting drug proceeds to Islamic schools and the Taliban. Other tape recordings revealed at least one of the defendants talking about the ability to acquire uranium and plutonium.

Talking about doing something isn't a crime unless you admit to doing something illegal (I think). Sounds to me like they were just discussing a possibility, nothing more. The prosecutor sounds desperate.


--------------------
"What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?"

"Belief is a beautiful armor
But makes for the heaviest sword"
- John Mayer

Making the noise "penicillin" is no substitute for actually taking penicillin.

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln


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