Tuesday July 9, 2013 (Vol. 38 No. 55)
V O I C E
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Junior achievement: South Surrey golfer Jamie Oleksiew carded a career-best round of 66 Thursday, which gave her enough of a lead to cruise to victory the next day at B.C. Junior Girls Championships in Langley. › see page 34
66 cocaine-filled condoms swallowed, as accused boarded bus for Canada
2½ years for ‘remorseful’ drug mule Tracy Holmes Staff Reporter
Ten months after he was arrested for attempting to smuggle cocaine into Canada, a man who swallowed 66 condoms containing the illicit drug was sentenced to an additional 20 months in custody for the crime. In imposing the penalty on Ricardo Vasquez in Surrey Provincial Court Friday, Judge James Sutherland said he’d heard no evidence to support that Vasquez was anything more than a courier in the operation.
At the same time, he wasn’t convinced Vasquez’s involvement was spontaneous. “There had to have been at least some degree of premeditation on the part of Mr. Vasquez,” Sutherland said. Vasquez – a 36-year-old resident of Mexico who was born in the U.S. – has been in custody since Sept. 7, after border guards at the Pacific Highway crossing in South Surrey became suspicious of information provided by Vasquez, who was a passenger on a northbound bus.
A first-time visitor to Canada, he initially told border guards he was travelling from Chicago, Ill. to Whistler to see a friend, but he had no return ticket; then he said he was travelling from Mexico via Chicago. He was also found to be carrying two cellphones, one of which bore a text message that appeared to point to a plan to import drugs, the court heard. During monitoring in a “drug loo” at Vancouver airport, Vasquez admitted to swallowing “about 20 pellets,” then began excret-
ing them about 30 minutes later. The balance of the 66 pellets – a total 725 grams of cocaine with an estimated street value of just over $25,000 – were collected at Richmond Hospital over the next two days. In sentencing submissions, federal prosecutor James Whiting had asked Sutherland to impose a four-year sentence on Vasquez. Defence counsel Evi dos Santos asked either for time served or for additional time to be in the form of a conditional sentence. › see page 2
Entrapment suggested
Terrorist strategy probed Jeff Nagel Black Press
Hip to be square
Boaz Joseph photo
The Diamond Country Dancers proved that it’s hip to be square when they took over the stage at the Pioneer Fair Saturday at the Historic Stewart Farm in South Surrey. The enthusiastic group of volunteers – some of whom have been dancing with the group since 1996 – can be seen at a number of events around the province, performing both square and round dances.
Civil libertarians want more detail on how police investigated a Canada Day bomb plot to see if officers came too close to entrapping the accused Surrey couple. John Stewart Nuttall and Amanda Marie Korody were arrested July 1 on terrorism-related charges after the planting of disabled pressurecooker bombs outside the legislature in Victoria. Doubts have grown about their ability to carry out an act of terrorism, as more details spilled out about their impoverished life inside a North Surrey basement suite, where they lived on social assistance without a vehicle and got methadone treatment for drug addiction. Police say they became “self-radicalized” to support the al-Qaida ideology and posed a serious threat to kill or maim people. RCMP officers announcing the arrests said that since February a “variety of complex investigative and covert techniques” were used to monitor and control the pair to prevent public harm. › see page 2
See page 4 BORDER GOLD CORP.
Local Produce Season has arrived at Kin’s!