WARNING: This article contains graphic details of violence.

The prosecutor is calling for a nine-year sentence for a 21-year-old Edmonton man who pleaded guilty to beating and robbing a woman in a Yellowknife apartment, and to cocaine trafficking.

Akok Aken was one of three men charged in connection with the attack on Oct. 31, 2021, at a Garden Townhomes apartment. His lawyer argued that a sentence of six years would be more appropriate.

The victim was hit and threatened with a pistol, according to an agreed statement of facts. The men accused the woman of stealing two ounces of cocaine from them and marched her upstairs to the bedroom she was renting in the apartment.

They held a pistol to her head and repeatedly hit her in the head and hands with it and dragged her by her hair. With her mouth taped and hands bound, they threatened her with a machete and used it to cut off some of her hair. They punched and kicked her and threatened to kill her if she went to police or didn't pay them $6,000. The men took her cell phone and identification documents.

"The most aggravating aspect of the robbery was the deliberate and cruel manner in which it was carried out," said prosecutor Nakita McFadden at Aken's sentencing hearing in N.W.T. Supreme Court on Friday.

One of the men recorded some of the attack on his cellphone. Those clips were played in court. The woman can be seen moaning and crying out as the three men laugh at her, threaten, punch and kick her. At the prosecutor's request, the judge has sealed the video from public view.

Four days after she was beaten, the woman went to the RCMP detachment to report the attack. Later that day officers arrested Aken and another of the attackers, 19-year-old Abdulrasaq Ahme Yousif, at the same apartment. They found 28 grams of cocaine on Aken and a .38 calibre revolver on Yousif. The RCMP got a search warrant and found $9,022 in cash, weigh scales, 55.5 grams of cocaine, a money counter and 14 cell phones in the apartment.

Drug dealing from inside jail and while out on bail

Aken was later released on bail, his father acting as a surety. He was to remain in the home under curfew and was prohibited from leaving Edmonton.

Yousif was held at the North Slave Correctional Complex. While there, Yousif continued to run his drug dealing operation by phone, according to the agreed statement of facts. Police listened in on more than 75 hours of recordings of phone calls he made to accomplices, including Aken, from the jail, despite a recorded announcement advising that outgoing calls may be recorded.

In the agreed facts, Aken admitted they used youths age 16 and 17 to act as street dealers for a "dial-a-dope" cocaine dealing operation they were running 24 hours a day, seven days a week in Yellowknife. In one phone call, Aken told Yousif they were selling $3,000 worth of cocaine a day.

On Jan. 27, 2022, police arrested Aken as he was driving back to Yellowknife from Edmonton. He was carrying 240 grams of cocaine.

Aken was then kept in jail, but he also made phone calls to accomplices about where to purchase cocaine and for what price, as well as strategies to increase sales, according to the statement of agreed facts. One of those strategies was to purchase the opioid Percocet from the dark web and flood the city with it, "get them all addicted," then raise the price when demand increases.

Aken has remained in jail ever since, a total of 407 days, according to the prosecutor and defence lawyer Jessi Casebeer. Casebeer urged Justice Andrew Mahar to show restraint because of Aken's youth and because he has never been convicted of a crime before.

But Justice Mahar said the case involved, "an outrageous set of criminal circumstances," and noted the robbery alone, because it involved a restricted firearm, requires a minimum of five years.

"Really, what I'm trying to decide here is between eight or nine [years]," said the judge. "I think the Crown's position is quite reasonable."

Mahar will give his decision on March 1.

Yousif has pleaded guilty to charges of robbery using a firearm, illegally possessing a restricted firearm and conspiracy to traffic cocaine. The prosecutor is calling for a nine-year sentence for him as well. Due to the lawyers' availability, he won't find out his sentence until July.

The third man charged in connection in the robbery, Yaha Musa Abdullahi, is scheduled to go on trial in August.