DRUG LORD'S SENTENCE ENDS 15 YEARS EARLY

Mafia drug lord Alfonso Caruana has been paroled from his 18-year
drug-trafficking sentence -- just three years after a judge jailed him.

Despite being a kingpin of an elaborate multimillion-dollar global business
involving quantities of cocaine that law-enforcement officials term
astounding, Mr. Caruana is considered by Canadian authorities to be no
different than any other first-time, non-violent offender.

As such, he has automatically been given the benefit of the doubt by
Canadian officials -- though new charges from his native Italy are keeping
him in jail and out of a halfway house for the time being.

"You have been convicted of extremely serious drug offences and are said to
be a member of an organization known to use violence to achieve criminal
objectives," reads an April 14 National Parole Board decision sent to Mr.
Caruana.

"There is, however, no information available in your case linking you
personally to any possession or use of weapons or to any acts of violence,"
the decision says.

Simonne Ferguson, regional director of the board's Ontario branch, says the
law leaves parole-board members no discretion when it comes to first-time,
non-violent offenders such as Mr. Caruana.

"If there is no evidence of violence, then the board must direct the
day-parole release," Ms. Ferguson wrote in a letter to The Globe and Mail.
She said such offenders get out of prison after serving one-sixth of their
terms, without even having to appear at a hearing or make a case that they
have reformed.

By now, Mr. Caruana would have already been sent from a minimum-security
prison and into a halfway house -- had Italy not laid new charges against
him three days before he was paroled.

He is now in a gritty Toronto jail as extradition proceedings surrounding
the new charges begin.

Mr. Caruana is expected to seek bail and also battle any attempt to remove
him from Canada.

On top of the new Italian charges, the long-time resident of Woodbridge,
Ont., has already been sentenced to 21 years by Italy.

Canada has a law that seeks to make reputed gangsters spend at least
one-third of their sentence in prison, but a Quebec decision effectively
quashed that rule, finding it unconstitutional in most cases.

The April 14 National Parole Board decision makes reference to Mr.
Caruana's "large-scale drug offences" but says he has no known history of
personally assaulting anyone.

He has, however, been ordered to stay away from others with organized-crime
connections, including several members of his own family.