Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

IQALUIT (Feb 08/99) - Shahin Paydar sat sobbing in the front row of Iqaluit's territorial courtroom last Friday as he awaited sentencing.

The day before, after just a few hours of deliberating, a jury of his peers found him guilty of conspiring to import one-half kilogram of cocaine -- with an approximate street value of $200,000 in Iqaluit -- into Canada from South America.

As Paydar stood beside his lawyer, handcuffed and surrounded by police officers, Justice John Vertes sentenced the 32-year-old to four years in prison.

"I will be as lenient as I possibly can... you have committed a very serious crime," said Vertes, who, as a superior court judge, was required to preside over the jury trial requested by Paydar.

Vertes said his sentence reflected the fact that Paydar's role in the conspiracy was simply that of courier -- or mule -- and that he recognized that the Iranian-born Canadian citizen was not involved in the sale of the narcotic.

Two of Paydar's co-conspirators who did take part in the trafficking of the cocaine, Adam Pitts and Grant Liddiard, have both received prison terms of several years, while charges against a fourth member of the ring, Jay Wisintainer, were stayed when it was ruled that the RCMP had violated his constitutional rights.

Paydar's involvement in the incident began in May of 1997 when his co-conspirators planned and paid for him to fly to Colombia and buy the drugs. In exchange, they agreed to pay him $20,000 for transporting the cocaine back to Iqaluit.

Paydar followed through on his end of the bargain and then proceeded to smuggle the drugs back into Canada in the soles of his sneakers. After he arrived home, he turned the cocaine over to Pitts, ending his involvement in the conspiracy.

Vertes reprimanded Paydar for the greed that likely brought him into the deal in the first place and went on to question how the members of the group thought their crime would go undetected, even though they used their own names and bank accounts in Canada and in Colombia to buy the cocaine.

"These people were so stupid... how these people thought they wouldn't get caught is beyond me," said Vertes.