Brendon and Simon Khalil: Father and son caught with Lebanese gang’s 56kg of cocaine hidden in tyres jailed

A father and son from Sydney have been handed hefty jail terms in WA for their part in a plot to sell 56kg of cocaine smuggled from Switzerland, hidden inside car tyres. Simon Khalil, 56, and his son Brendon Khalil both got hooked on drugs during their teens — and it was the 29-year-old’s addiction that has now sent both of them behind bars. Their District Court of WA sentencing on Thursday was told that Brendon had been using cocaine heavily in 2015 but was buying it “on tick” — on credit — from a Lebanese syndicate in NSW. When the debt mounted up, he agreed to sell 1kg for the gang, spending a year in jail after unwittingly handing it to an undercover cop. That added an extra $30,000 to the debt pile, with the syndicate blaming him for the loss of the drugs. And when he “accidentally came back into contact with them” years later, they hadn’t forgotten, Judge Craig Astill said. “You were worried about what would happen . . . there was no way you would be able to readily pay back what it was that they said that you owed,” Judge Astill said. So when they asked if he knew anyone in Perth who could receive a consignment purported to be four Mercedes Benz wheels, Brendon gave them the details of his cousin who ran a car repair business. After being imported, the wheels sat in a Welshpool warehouse, and he arranged for their delivery to a Nollamara “safehouse”, using a “man with a van” he’d seen on Gumtree and paid $250. Simon then flew into Perth, knowing his son “had got himself involved in a troubling situation” and wanted to protect him, Judge Astill said. The judge said he was prepared to accept Brendon wasn’t aware of the colossal scale of the import until he arrived at the safehouse with his father and was handed a box containing a large amount of white powder. “You now had full knowledge of what it was that you were doing and what you were involving yourself in,” the judge said. “You did not desist. You didn’t even pause.” They waited for two hours at Belmont Forum Shopping Centre before throwing the drugs into a skip bin behind Coles, having grown concerned that the operation had been compromised. “But by this stage, it was, of course, too late,” Judge Astill said. At the warehouse, Australian Federal Police had seized the cocaine, worth up to $18 million, and replaced it with an inert substance. And they had been watching the whole time the pair were at the shops, arresting them a short distance down the road. Brendon had been the expendable “shield” for those above him in the syndicate and had used others the same way, the judge said. The people at the safehouse, Natalia Luders, Barry Luders and Lloyd Mercer, were convicted after a trial and are yet to be sentenced, while the courier was oblivious to the risk he was running for his paltry fee, Judge Astill said. “This operation came with real risk. Those at the top rely on people such as yourself to take on that risk,” he said. As for Simon, his son would have still gone through with the operation with or without his father’s support, the judge said. Brendon was sentenced to 11 years and six months’ imprisonment, with parole eligibility after seven years, while his dad, Simon, was jailed for six years and must serve a minimum term of three years. “Drug importers are motivated by one thing only — greed — and there is no consideration to the harm their actions can have on the Australian community,” Australian Border Force commander Ranjeev Maharaj said.

Brendon and Simon Khalil: Father and son caught with Lebanese gang’s 56kg of cocaine hidden in tyres jailed

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