A father-of-two was sentenced to five years in prison after he admitted smuggling almost a kilogram of cocaine to the Island.Carim Clarke, 29, of East Dale Lane, Southampton, pleaded guilty in Magistrates’ Court to importing the controlled drug.The court heard Clarke flew into the Island from Newark, New Jersey, on October 3, 2010, and was selected for a secondary inspection.Customs officers noticed that Clarke appeared nervous. His bags were searched and X-rayed but results of the X-ray were inconclusive, leading to a further search.The officers discovered three backpacks inside Clarke’s baggage. They drilled into the frame of one of the bags and discovered a white powder on the drill bit.A total of 43 small bags of white powder were found hidden in the frames of the backpacks and the suitcase itself. Lab tests later confirmed the powder to be 975.19g of cocaine, with an average purity of around 48 percent.The court heard that the cocaine recovered could fetch as much as $182,875 if sold in half-grams on the streets of Bermuda.After pleading guilty, Mr Clarke apologised to the court, saying economic challenges caused him to make a mistake.Magistrate Khamisi Tokunbo replied: “We all make mistakes, but some of us learn from our mistakes.”The magistrate noted Clarke had a prior conviction for possessing cannabis, saying he had gone from having a small quantity of one drug to a significant quantity of a harder drug.“You gambled and lost, and now you have to pay,” Mr Tokunbo said. “You can turn this around and make the most out of it.“You have two young children you put in a predicament to be without a father.”Mr Tokunbo sentenced Clarke to five years’ imprisonment, noting his guilty plea.Clarke was additionally fined $100 and given two demerit points for an unrelated traffic matter.