Man accused of smuggling tries to get case dismissed
The Île-Bizard resident who is alleged to have orchestrated a cocaine-smuggling effort that resulted in a former border guard being sentenced to an 11-year prison term this week is seeking to have the case brought against him tossed out, as well as another case.
Sonider Dhingra, 44, made a brief appearance before Quebec Court Judge Geneviève Graton at the Montreal courthouse on Wednesday as his lawyer, Debora De Thomasis, updated the court on her plans to have one of two drug-related cases he faces placed under a stay of proceedings on the argument it has taken the Crown too long to bring the case to trial. Graton agreed to hear the Jordan motion at the end of July.
In that case, Dhingra was arrested in 2013 in a police investigation dubbed Project Abri that resulted in the arrests of six people and the seizure of more than 100 kilograms of cocaine. He was charged with four counts of drug trafficking and one count of conspiracy.
Dhinghra, who has been detained since 2014, is also charged in a completely separate case with smuggling 182 kilograms of cocaine into Canada with the help of his former lover, Stefanie McClelland, 40, a former Canada Border Services Agency officer who was working at the Lacolle border on Dec. 2, 2014, when she allowed a BMW to enter the country without being inspected. The RCMP pulled over the BMW after it crossed the border and found 182 kilograms of cocaine inside. On Tuesday, McClelland received an 11-year sentence for cocaine smuggling and breach of trust.
Dhingra has yet to see a trial date set for the smuggling case and De Thomasis has filed a motion arguing the RCMP failed to disclose all of its evidence related to a phone seized in the investigation. De Thomasis is requesting that a stay of proceedings be placed on the smuggling case if a judge agrees the RCMP failed to disclose the evidence.
Four other people charged in Project Abri have since pleaded guilty to drug-trafficking charges. They were all sentenced to overall prison terms between five and nine years.
The arrest of one of the people involved in the network, Richard Desrosiers, shocked many in Montreal’s legal community because he was, at the time, considered to be a model of rehabilitation. Before his arrest, he was often called on to testify during bail or sentence hearings as a court liaison in support of people with drug-addiction problems.
Desrosiers changed his life significantly after having been convicted of a series of bank robberies during the 1970s. By 1985, he found himself serving a combined 20-year sentence for a series of different crimes. But he turned his life around and became one of the founding members of Option Vie, a group of ex-convicts who provide moral support to people serving life sentences for murder or lengthy sentences for crimes like armed robbery. He obtained a pardon in 2003 and also worked for a drug-rehabilitation program based in Montreal up until 2009. That is why many lawyers at the Montreal courthouse were startled to learn that, during Project Abri, Desrosiers was pulled over while driving a car and a search of the vehicle turned up 10 kilograms of cocaine.
Last year, Desrosiers pleaded guilty to conspiracy and drugtrafficking charges and was left with a three-year prison term when he received an overall sentence of seven years. Last month, the Parole Board of Canada made a decision granting him full parole in the next three months if his day parole goes well. According to a written summary of the decision, Desrosiers, 66, acted as a chauffeur for the network and was following orders.
The summary reveals that in 2009, Desrosiers had to resign from his job with the drug-rehabilitation program after authorities learned he participated in smuggling contraband tobacco into a jail. The following year, he inherited more than $200,000 after a relative of his died and spent almost all of it within two years. Desrosiers told the parole board he decided to act as a courier for the drug dealers arrested in Project Abri because he was worried his savings were running out.