Mohammat Nosrati: Former inmate jailed for smuggling drugs into Yongah Hill Immigration Detention Centre

A former immigration detainee has been jailed after a Perth judge called him “optimistic and foolish” for smuggling drugs into a Northam detention centre. Mohammat Hossain Nosrati pleaded guilty to trafficking more than 91g of cannabis, methamphetamine and heroin into Yongah Hill Immigration Detention Centre after he was caught accepting two “packages” from a female visitor in November 2022. Nosrati was one of 152 non-citizens released from immigration detention after a landmark High Court decision in November found it was illegal to hold stateless individuals indefinitely. District Court Judge David MacLean on Thursday ordered Nosrati serve 18 months in custody before being released on a recognisance order of good behaviour. The visitor was sentenced to 26 months imprisonment in February 2024. Mr MacLean said Nosrati had attempted to smuggle drugs with a “significant purity” which had the capacity to cause “real harm”. “This is a substance that makes the lives of people . . . miserable,” he said. “It’s a dangerous substance that’s highly marketable and causes more crime within the facility itself. “You were prepared to act as a facilitator in the sense as a courier to receive from an unknown person these packages and pass them onto the person within the immigration facility who . . . was going to profit from them and use them to their own advantage and to the detriment of others.” Nosrati was also promised a “small amount” of cannabis in exchange for smuggling the drugs into the detention centre. Mr MacLean said CCTV footage showed Nosrati “hugging” and “trying-on” the visitor’s hat at the exact moment the drugs were delivered. “Brazen is perhaps the most polite way of describing it; optimistic and foolish might be another,” he said. “You were in a detention facility, there’s people all around you, there’s cameras there, there’s guards there. “It seemed to me, inevitable that you were going to be caught by way of the clumsy nature of the handover.” Mr MacLean commended Nosrati had already “fessed up”, stating, “it demonstrates that you’re prepared to accept responsibility for what it was that you did.” Mr MacLean also recognised Nosrati had suffered bouts of depression and anxiety after fleeing Iran at just 17 years old. “The report tells me that you’ve experienced difficulty in so far as acclimatising or adjusting to this country,” he said. “The offending that I’m dealing with you now . . . was likely to have been considerably influenced by your feelings of powerlessness and a persistent belief that your situation at the time could not improve ... with you appearing to have much difficulty finding positive ways to cope with your perceived lack of control over your life.” In sentencing, Mr MacLean said the jail term would “send a message to the community that people who commit these types of offences . . . won’t be tolerated.” “(The penalty is) not only to deter you, but more significantly, to deter others who might be tempted to act in the way that you did,” he said.