A Sydney father is "crushed" at the prospect of spending the rest of his life in a Fijian jail after a court on Friday found him guilty of drug possession.
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Tow truck driver Joseph Abourizk, 30, continues to maintain his innocence even though a judge found that he was guilty of possessing two suitcases filled with almost 50 kilograms of cocaine.
His wife, Karla, said that how she was feeling was "beyond words".
"There was no doubt in our minds he was returning home," Mrs Abourizk told Fairfax Media from her home in Sydney.
"Now my husband spends the next year awaiting a fair reopening of this matter in a Third World country away from his wife, family and daughter whose birth was robbed of him."
On Wednesday, five assessors in the High Court of Fiji at Lautoka unanimously found Abourizk not guilty of unlawful possession of illicit drugs.
Assessors are the equivalent of professional jurors and they give their opinion to a judge.
But judges are not bound by their decisions.
On Friday morning, Justice Thushara Rajasinghe found Abourizk was guilty and will sentence him next Thursday. The maximum sentence is life.
"He's crushed, we're all crushed," his Sydney lawyer Warwick Korn told Fairfax Media from Fiji.
"Every single one of the assessors who heard the evidence found him not guilty and yet next week he will be sentenced," Mr Korn said.
"It's very difficult to comprehend."
Abourizk has been in jail for nine months and missed the recent birth of his first child, a daughter named Penelope.
He was arrested in July last year after he was pulled over in a car by police near Vuda Marina.
In the boot police found two suitcases containing $15 million worth of cocaine.
Abourizk's lawyers - Mr Korn, Sydney barrister Murugan Thangaraj, SC, and Lautoka lawyer Iqbal Khan - argued during a recent trial that their client was exploited by the captain of a charter boat.
The defence case was that Abourizk decided to take a boat tour off the coast of Vuda with a Fijian local on July 13, 2015.
Before boarding the boat, the captain of the vessel asked Abourizk to collect some equipment with him.
Abourizk's case is that he agreed and then he travelled to the nearby town of Ba with the captain and Fijian man Josese Muriwaqa.
The captain then loaded two suitcases into the back of the car and the trio headed back to Vuda to take a boat out for a day trip.
When the group were driving back to the marina, the captain got out of the car shortly before Abourizk and Mr Muriwaqa were arrested by Fijian police.
He and Mr Muriwaqa were each charged with one count of unlawful possession of illicit drugs.
"His position is very simple - he had no idea what was in the captain's bags," Mr Korn told Fairfax Media.
Abourizk and his wife had been holidaying in Fiji before his arrest.
His wife went home early because of work commitments, and the next day Abourizk was arrested.
The prosecution's case is that the Australian was paid money by the captain to move the drugs.
