NINE-YEAR TERM URGED FOR DEALER

A convicted gun trafficker should serve an additional seven to nine
years in jail after he pleaded guilty to drug charges, a federal
prosecutor said Friday.

Richard Pollock said Mazin Odish and several co-conspirators provided
large quantities of drugs to undercover RCMP and OPP officers in
exchange for truckloads of cigarettes.

Odish, 30, pleaded guilty to possession of drugs for the purposes of
trafficking.

He had pleaded guilty in June to a firearms charge and was sentenced
to two years for attempting to sell an AK-47 knockoff to undercover
police.

Pollock told the court he would be asking for a further seven-to
nine-year sentence on the drug charges.

He said the police investigation saw undercover officers arranging to
trade "black-market" cigarettes to Odish, and several co-conspirators,
in exchange for cocaine, methamphetamine and Oxycodone over several
transactions beginning in the summer of 2004 and lasting through
winter 2005.

Lawyer Brian Dube, representing Odish, told the court he would argue
for a four-year sentence and wanted his client credited with already
serving three years because of the one year he has already spent
serving time in the Windsor Jail under protective custody and in
overcrowded and poor conditions.

Pollock said the conspirators met with undercover officers on several
occasions. The meeting sites included mall parking lots, doughnut
shops and Odish's convenience store in the 3400 block of Wyandotte
Street East.

In September 2004, investigators arranged to trade three cases of
cigarettes, swapped in the parking lot of Devonshire Mall, for 110.6
grams of cocaine with a street value of $16,590. The pattern was
repeated a half dozen times. In February 2005, Odish agreed to provide
two kilos of cocaine, plus $1.2 million, including a $200,000 down
payment for 1,000 cases of cigarettes.

A separate arrangement to purchase five AK-47, Russian-made assault
rifles went awry when Odish could furnish only one of the guns and
undercover officers determined it was a Romanian-made weapon of
inferior quality.

Pollock insisting Odish should get little credit for spending a year
in the Windsor Jail, while Dube argued the conditions of incarceration
were so harsh that his client should get a three to one credit, rather
than the usual two to one, for days served.

Dube said Odish developed a rash in jail, a sinus condition and
headaches because of the lack of hygiene and overcrowding, sometimes
resulting in three prisoners sharing a cell built for one. He said
mattresses were dirty and stained, laundry returned unclean and there
were only two bunks to a cell, the third inmate forced to sleep on a
mattress on the floor. Sometimes inmates were "dummied," or beaten by
other prisoners.

But Pollock scoffed at suggestions Odish was in protective custody to
keep him safe from fellow inmates, noting he was there because he
sought that status because it was calmer and quieter.

"You're Mazin Odish," he said. "You traffic Ak-47s and cocaine. Who at
the county jail is going to bother you? You're not going to get dummied."

The sentencing hearing resumes Monday.