LIFE SENTENCE FOR 'DESPICABLE' COCAINE KINGPIN

Cocaine kingpin Alfredo Malanca was called "a purveyor of misery" and
"despicable" before being sentenced to life imprisonment for
smuggling more than a quarter tonne of cocaine into Canada.

Superior Court Justice Gordon Thomson, in sentencing Malanca, 33, in
a Hamilton courtroom yesterday, spoke first of the devastating effect
of the cocaine on society, causing misery, suffering and degradation
to users and destruction, crime and violence in society as users turn
to crime to support their habit and street gang dealers kill each
other in turf wars.

"It's clear you have no feelings of any kind for anyone, and in
particular the end users (of cocaine) and their misery or the public
as victims ... you do not appear to have any conscience," Thomson
told the Bolton man.

Prosecutor Tom Andreopoulos said the life imprisonment sentence is
rare in drug cases, but that Thomson was sending a message that the
quantity of cocaine seized and gravity of its impact, if it had hit
the streets, needed nothing less.

It means the earliest Malanca can be eligible for parole is in seven
years, he said.

Malanca was convicted by a Hamilton jury in October of importing 272
kilograms of cocaine and also of conspiring with others to importing
it. He had no previous criminal record.

Drugs were flown in from Jamaica in a chartered jet, but were seized
by RCMP on Nov. 7, 2001, at Lake Simcoe Regional Airport in Oro
Medonte, north of Barrie.

Court heard the drugs would have cost $6 million in Jamaica, but had
an ultimate street value of $26.9 million.

The pilot, two passengers and three men on the ground were arrested
at the scene. Malanca was arrested in July 2002 with two dozen others
who were charged with a much wider conspiracy to import and
distribute about $95 million in cocaine, hashish and marijuana
imported from Panama, Chile, Colombia and the Caribbean.

Malanca is described as one of three kingpins in a drug smuggling and
trafficking network operating in Halifax, Montreal, Hamilton and Toronto.

Although Malanca was not at the Lake Simcoe airport when the 272
kilograms were smuggled in, Thomson said he had no doubt Malanca was
behind it. And despite the defence suggesting one of those arrested
at the airport, Dean Roberts of Montreal, was the boss and key
player, Thomson said Malanca was the boss who had others do the dirty
work for him as he sat comfortably in Toronto. "I am satisfied you
are in the top echelon of the cocaine business."

The sentence evoked sobs and anger from Malanca's family and
relatives in the courtroom, and temporarily put nerves on edge when
one of them angrily stormed out of the courtroom as Thomson gave out
the sentence.

RCMP investigators who worked for three years on Project Olco, which
began with a tip to the Mounties' Hamilton drug section, were happy
to see Malanca sent away for so long. Corporal Brian Reed said it was
a fitting and rightfully deserved sentence.

Thomson said the public doesn't normally learn the names of those at
the top, but want to know the courts will do their best to deter drug lords.

Thomson said Malanca led a double life, one as a legitimate young
businessman and the other secretly, as a sophisticated cocaine importer.