Cocaine case with Windsor link in U.S. court
Two men from Mirabel have pleaded guilty to being in possession of the large quantity of cocaine seized from their Windsor-bound aircraft after it was forced to make an emergency landing in Ohio more than two months ago.
The guilty pleas, submitted in writing over the past two weeks in a U.S. District Court in Ohio, come with 10-year mandatory minimum sentences because of the quantity of the cocaine involved. The maximum sentence is life in prison.
David Ayotte, 46, the first of the pair to submit a guilty plea, has a court date Friday during which he is expected to plead guilty in person. Sylvain Desjardins, 48, the pilot of the small Piper aircraft, filed his guilty plea last week. According to the plea agreements submitted in court, both men admit they “knowingly and willingly” possessed cocaine with the intent to distribute it.
On March 29, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in California tracked Desjardins’ Piper PA-31 as it was flying north of the Bahamas with a flight plan to land in Windsor. The plane diverted to Gordon K. Bush Airport, an airport owned by Ohio State University in Athens, Ohio. When it landed, Desjardins told authorities he had run into mechanical problems. Desjardins consented to allow customs agents to search the aircraft, and they found 132 bundles (weighing about one kilogram each) of cocaine hidden in its tail.
One week after Desjardins and Ayotte were arrested in Ohio, the Montreal police arrested 11 people and carried out 21 search warrants in Montreal, Laval, Lachute and Ste-Agathe-des-Monts as part of Project Affliction, an investigation into a drug trafficking network that began during the summer of 2016. It targeted a network that the Montreal police allege supplied cocaine to the Montreal Mafia and the Hells Angels.
The police seized 35 kilograms of cocaine during the course of the investigation and found records that indicate the group managed to sell 180 kilos over the course of three months. Ayotte is reported to have had ties to the group while it was being investigated.
The six men who have been charged with drug trafficking in Project Affliction so far have all been granted conditional releases. Their cases return to court in mid-June.