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Crown seeks prison term for man caught smuggling child porn into Canada

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A United Arab Emirates man nabbed at the Coutts border crossing with child pornography on his electronic devices should be handed a three-year prison term, a prosecutor argued Thursday.

But the lawyer for Hani Al-Askari said even the mandatory minimum sentence of one year behind bars would amount to a cruel and unusual punishment.

Defence counsel Nate Whitling wants Justice Earl Wilson to rule the minimum sentence unconstitutional, and hand his client a nine-month jail term.

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Crown prosecutor Jenny Rees said the minimum sentence in the Criminal Code for importing child pornography would not adequately address Al-Askari’s crimes.

Rees said a 15- to 18-month sentence would be called for, just for possessing the hundreds of videos and images seized by border officials when Al-Askari attempted to enter Canada on April 12, 2015.

And she argued a concurrent sentence of three years for importing the illicit material was also warranted for Al-Askari, 36, who was found in possession of 416 videos and 129 images.

But Whitling said his client, a Palestinian who has claimed refugee status, did not have child pornography as horrific as some offenders, nor as large a collection.

“It’s not small,” the lawyer said. “But it’s not near as big as some of the (other) cases, either.”

Whitling said he wasn’t trying to minimize his client’s culpability, but said there were worse offenders than the U.A.E. native, who claimed his collection came from the Abu Dhabi police for whom he worked — a defence rejected by Wilson.

“The collection in this case doesn’t rise to the level that you see in some of these cases … the horrific content,” Whitling said.

Wilson will hand down a sentencing decision next week.

KMartin@postmedia.com

On Twitter: @KMartinCourts

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