A judge yesterday sentenced a 58-year-old man to 18 years in prison and fined him Lm18,000 after a jury returned a guilty verdict on all four counts of drug related charges, saying that he spread the drug disease to ruin society.

A jury of nine returned four guilty verdicts on charges including cocaine possession and trafficking between December 2001 and July 2002 as well as cannabis possession and trafficking during the same time frame.

The jury returned a 7-2 guilty verdict on cocaine trafficking and an 8-1 verdict on all the other charges.

Ellul, looking frail and tired, sat in the dock as punishment was read out. The judge said that if the Lm18,000 was not paid within 15 days, the accused could look forward to another 18 months imprisonment. The defence had asked for clemency, and the prosecution concurred, but asked for a balance between clemency and justice. On reading out his judgment, Mr Justice Joe Galea Debono said: “You spread the disease of drugs to ruin society.”

Throughout the trial, Ellul vehemently denied any form of trafficking, but did admit that he was a user, going as far as to declare that he was “a victim of cocaine”.

Ellul also denied that he was trafficking despite being caught red handed, literally with a cannabis resin bar in his hand, with four others on a table ready to be sold on to others. He denied that he had told someone to come to his house to pick up some cannabis, even in face of police evidence that the phone call was part of a sting operation and that the officers involved heard him say that the other person, Ian Ciantar, could come and pick up the drugs from his house.

Ellul also tried to discredit the testimony of his own friend, Francis Chappelle, who told the court that he had spent “untold thousands” in buying cocaine from Ellul. The accused testified in his own defence during the trial, but his antics led to a direct encounter with Ciantar, after which he raised his voice in court, asking whether the jury and the judge were going to let Ciantar “get away with it” telling them that he was a big-time drug dealer that never took drugs and instead took advantage of others by selling them narcotics.

During the trial, the prosecution asked him whether he liked to be known as “King Cocaine”. Muddled, Ellul had repeated that no he was not, he was simply a user. At this point, the prosecution asked him about the very complex process to turn simple cocaine into highly potent crack cocaine, the variety which he liked to smoke. “You cook it up and it becomes like stone. Then you cool it and break a piece off to smoke on the bong,” said Ellul. The prosecution asked: “And you were good at this?” He replied: “When I do something, even with drugs, I like the end result to be perfect.” The jury retired to deliberate on the stroke of midday and emerged to return a verdict at about 4.15pm. The trial began on Monday.

Assistant Attorney General Anthony Barbara prosecuted while Dr Joe Brincat appeared for the accused.