A Detroit man who participated in an international heroin smuggling operation will be released from prison more than a decade early after a commutation issued by President Barack Obama this month.

Obi Maduka Emmanuel was convicted in 2007 on federal charges of conspiracy to distribute or possess with intent to distribute heroin; and conspiracy to import heroin into the U.S. from Afghanistan.

He was ordered to serve a 20-year prison sentence in 2007.

Obama awarded 325 commutations in August -- including 111 on Tuesday, Aug. 30 -- a single-month record for presidential commutations, the Washington Post reports.

The commutations have mostly involved nonviolent drug offenders serving stiff minimum sentences resulting from the nation's war on drugs that began in the 1970s.

Emmanuel is expected to be released this December with 10 years of supervised release, according to the U.S. Department of Justice website.

A commutation does not eliminate one's criminal record, but shortens the original prison sentence.

Emmanuel's attorneys and the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York disagree on how menacing Emmanuel's actions really were.

According to a press release issued by the New York U.S. attorney's office following Emmanuel's conviction in June 2007, Emmanuel masterminded the U.S. end of a heroin smuggling operation based in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Investigators said Emmanuel directed his co-defendant, Chimdi Ibiam, to import three kilograms of heroin, the government said.

The DEA also intercepted communications between Ibiam and Emmanuel on efforts to obtain the three kilograms of heroin, the government said in its statement following trial.

"Those conversations, which were introduced at trial, revealed that Emmanuel was directing Ibiam and that, when Ibiam obtained the heroin, he was supposed to deliver it to Emmanuel for distribution," prosecutors said.

DEA agents and informants in Kabul Afghanistan infiltrated the heroin operation and delivered a sample of heroin to Ibiam at a Starbuck's in Manhattan, N.Y. in 2006.

"At the time of the delivery, Ibiam and the confidential informant discussed the future delivery of larger amounts of heroin," the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

"Following delivery of the heroin sample to Ibiam, members of the organization provided another 15 kilograms of heroin to the undercover in Afghanistan, three of which were intended for delivery to the United States and twelve of which were intended for delivery to London."

When Ibiam arrived to receive the shipment near Washington D.C., DEA agents delivered three kilograms of fake heroin and arrested him. Ibiam then agreed to make wire-tapped phone calls to Emmanuel, who investigators say intended to distribute the drugs in Michigan.

Ibiam was released from federal prison in June of 2015, according to Bureau of Prisons online records.

Emmanuel's attorney, Joseph A. Grob, in his sentencing memorandum painted the transaction as a form of entrapment that violated due process.

He said DEA agents in the U.S. were instructed by their own contacts in Kabul, Afghanistan to end the operation, but continued anyway.

"As such, the DEA Strike Force set up its own sting/reverse sting that was unrelated to (the Apghan co-conspirator's) efforts to smuggle narcotics into New York," Grob wrote in his sentencing memo.

"The fact that the DEA accomplished this operation by stealing the narcotics from Noor, and delivering those narcotics to Ibiam, who had no agreement with Noor, clearly establishes that this operation became a creature of the strike force's own construction.

" ... The DEA, on its own, usurped the entire operation and orchestrated its own operation targeting Ibiam, a person who could barely afford to pay for his own gasoline, let alone 3 kilograms of heroin."

Gorb called Maduka's original sentence "Draconian" and "obscene" and said he fully supports Obama's decision to commute it.