Trial in Feldkirch

Prison sentence instead of wedding for drug dealer

The 48-year-old will probably have to postpone his wedding.(Bild: Chantal Dorn, Krone KREATIV)

On Friday, a 48-year-old man from Vorarlberg was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for dealing cocaine at Feldkirch Regional Court. He had actually planned to walk down the aisle in July. 

The defendant, who was convicted of being a member of a drug ring, was only released in November. Now an old history of drug use has caught up with him again and given him another four and a half years in prison.

The reason for this is the results of the analysis of the crypto cell phones that were seized during a major raid by the criminal investigation department four years ago. While the "big boss" of the cocaine ring, who was living in Switzerland at the time, managed to go into hiding in his home country of Bosnia, other members of the organization went to jail - the Austrian judiciary handed down several multi-year prison sentences.

Cocaine trafficking on a grand scale
The accused, who was almost pathologically addicted to cocaine at the time, was also prosecuted. He had acted as a simple drug carrier in the criminal network and was sentenced to three years in prison for passing on around two kilograms of cocaine. After evaluating all crypto cell phones, the public prosecutor's office now alleges that the man procured and passed on a total of five kilograms of cocaine from autumn 2020 to spring 2022. This is a quantity for which the law provides for a sentence of up to 15 years in prison in the event of a conviction.

From drug addict to family man
Defence lawyer Bernd Widerin describes the fact that the 48-year-old has now sworn off drugs after successful therapy, has a regular job and has focused entirely on his family as a "prime example of resocialization".

However, the legal representative's wish that his client would be spared prison as a result of this remarkable purification was not fulfilled. Instead, the presiding judge of the panel of lay judges, Alexander Wehinger, sentenced Oberländer, who had fully confessed, to an additional four and a half years and to pay a forfeiture amount of 294,000 euros to the Austrian state. Particularly bitter: in July, the accused actually wanted to get married. The defense has already announced its intention to appeal the verdict.