An ice trafficker involved in a crime syndicate headed by Fadi Haddara at Williamstown North has had his jail sentence cut on appeal.
Mohammed El Achkar, 32, was sentenced on January 29 in the County Court to a maximum of two years and eight months, with a 16-month minimum.
He had pleaded guilty to one charge of drug trafficking, and was found guilty by a jury of another instance of the same offence. However, the Court of Appeal has reduced his sentence to eight months, about the amount of time already served, with a two-year community corrections order.
The court ruled that El Achkar’s sentence was manifestly excessive compared with the sentences handed to his co-offenders.
Haddara, named in court as the ringleader, was last year sentenced to 18 months’ jail and three years on a community corrections order.
El Achkar was caught as part of Skyborne, a Santiago taskforce operation in which police concealed listening devises and cameras at Haddara’s panel-beating shop in Orange Street, Williamstown North.
Between May 2013, and March 2014, undercover police conducted 39 transactions with 13 accused, including El Achkar.
Covert operatives purchased from the crime syndicate a total of 395 grams of methylamphetamine (ice), two handguns and a sawn-off rifle, a combined value of $155,250.
On January 16, 2014, El Achkar visited Haddara’s shop and sold him about two ounces (56 grams) of ice for $13,200, a charge to which he pleaded guilty. The second charge related to January 23, 2014, when El Achkar supplied Haddara with about an ounce (27.8 grams) of ice with a purity of 70 per cent.
The Santiago taskforce was set up after a shooting spree in the north-west linked to rival families, including the Haddaras and Chaouks.
