Probation for man who hid knife blades in bum

A man who claimed he was kidnapped, forced to insert marijuana and two knife blades up his rectum and ordered to smuggle the items into the Thorold jail has been placed on probation for 15 months.

Kidus Dawit was found guilty in Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines earlier this year to charges of possession of marijuana and carrying a concealed weapon.

At a sentencing hearing Wednesday, Judge Peter Wilkie imposed a sentence of time served — the defendant had served the equivalent of a 10-month jail term in pretrial custody — placed him on probation and ordered him to perform 75 hours of community service.

At an earlier court appearance, defence counsel Donald Wolfe said his 30-year-old client was not planning on using the items he attempted to bring in, rather he was delivering the contraband to someone else.

At trial, Dawit had testified that several unknown people confronted him at a residence in Niagara and drove him to Hamilton.

The Fort Erie resident said he was forced at knifepoint to insert what he was told were packages of tobacco.

He said he was instructed to deliver the contraband to unnamed inmates at Niagara Detention Centre. If he failed to deliver, he was told he’d be assaulted by the intended recipients inside the jail.

Two packages were seized. One contained a condom filled with marijuana and the second package had two four-inch-long ceramic knife blades. Ceramic blades are undetectable by metal detectors.