DRUG KINGPIN SENTENCED

Shipment Of Hashish Destined For Montreal, Valued At $225 Million,
Intercepted By Cops

Peter Toman, the kingpin in a failed plot to import 22.5 tonnes of
hashish by boat from Pakistan, was sentenced yesterday to 11 years in
a federal prison.

In accepting the sentencing recommendations of the Crown and the
defence, Quebec Court Judge Martin Vauclair noted that Toman, 59,
pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to import drugs and
trafficking, and had no previous record for drug offences.

Toman's son-in-law, Shawn Daoust, was sentenced to four years for
plotting to transport the drug shipment, valued at $225 million, from
the port of Halifax to the Montreal region.

Daoust, 30, dropped out of the drug deal before RCMP agents moved in
to make arrests, the judge noted. Daoust's only previous drug
convictions involved possession and cultivation of marijuana.

The judge also prohibited Toman and Daoust to own licensed weapons
for 10 years, and imposed a lifetime ban on the ownership of
prohibited firearms, which include automatic weapons and certain handguns.

Toman's son, Andrew Toman, 24, and Sidney Lallouz, 57, who also
pleaded guilty to conspiracy to import drugs and trafficking, will be
sentenced Sept. 25.

The arrests followed a well-orchestrated police sting in May, when
undercover RCMP agents arranged with the elder Toman to pick up the
drugs off the coast of Angola and transport them to Halifax.

Three weeks later, undercover officers delivered a tonne of the drugs
to an address in St. Jean sur Richelieu.

The Crown confiscated the initial transport payment of $195,000 that
Toman unwittingly handed over to the undercover agents. Another $9
million had been promised on delivery of the hashish.

The drug bust was one of the "most significant seizures" in Canada,
federal Crown prosecutor Silvie Kovacevich said.

"When Canadian authorities and police have the opportunity and means
to investigate (drug deals), they will," she said.

"When they are done, significant sentences will be handed out."

The Crown is asking for a prison term of 61/2 years for Lallouz, who
travelled overseas on behalf of his co-conspirators, Kovacevich said.
A two-year sentence is being sought for Andrew Toman, who played a
minor role in the conspiracy, she added.

Peter Toman's wife, Catherine, is clinical director at Heritage Home,
a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre in Huntingdon, near the U.S. border.

She was not charged in the drug conspiracy, and did not take part in
the prosecution's case against members of her family, Kovacevich said.