Category

Caribbean

• Caribbean, North America, Smuggling, War on Drugs

  Prosecution given 45 more days in Shaheed Roger Khan drug case

  08.10.06 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  It seems that Shaheed Roger Khan will have to wait until late September to have his day in a Brooklyn court on drugs charges, after prosecutors from the Eastern New York District Attorney’s Office requested and were granted another 45 days to build their case, citing its complexity. This was after Khan’s lead defence attorney, John Bergendahl, had filed a motion in a New York court asking for the dismissal of his client’s indictment because of its “cryptic form” and the possibility that Khan could go into the trial “blind”.

  Khan, a controversial businessman from Guyana, was indicted in April this year on charges of conspiring to import five kilograms or more of cocaine into the U.S between January 2001 and March 2006. This followed and was then followed up by several run-ins with authorities in Guyana and Suriname, respectively, over alleged weapons and drug smuggling offences. (For the complete details and timeline in this case, see my previous article.)

• Caribbean, North America, Smuggling, War on Drugs

  Guyanese government wants answers over arrest of Shaheed Roger Khan

  07.14.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  The government of Guyana has indicated that it is officially seeking information from the governments of the United States, Suriname and Trinidad over whether Shaheed Roger Khan, the businessman and alleged drug trafficker now facing drugs charges in a U.S. court, was kidnapped from a Trinidad airport while on his way back to Guyana.

  Khan had been deported from Suriname in June after having earlier being arrested on drugs and arms charges; he had faced similar charges in Guyana before fleeing to Suriname. Meanwhile, his attorney’s have failed in a court bid to get Surinamese authorities to reverse his expulsion order and be returned. The Guyanese government, I suspect, will have about as much success.

  The story so far:

  * Shaheed Roger Khan, a businessman and widely suspected drug trafficker, is linked to the disappearance of assault rifles from a Guyanese military base in March; he denies the charges. Raids of his businesses and properties unearth some cocaine and illegal weapons. Khan subsequently disappears.

  * Khan is indicted in a Brooklyn court in April for conspiracy to import five or more kilograms of cocaine into the U.S between January 2001 and March 2006. The previous month he had been named as a major drug trafficker in the US government’s annual narcotics report.

  * Khan is arrested in Suriname in June, along with three former policemen, after authorities netted over 200 kilograms of cocaine and some weapons and ammunition in a raid. He is then accused by the Surinamese Justice Minister of planning and ordering the assassination of prominent Surinamese public officials.

• Caribbean, Latin America, North America, People, Smuggling, War on Drugs

  Rayo-Montano Shut Down

  06.02.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  The month of May saw the demise of one of the world’s biggest drug barons when Brazilian police arrested Colombian, Pablo Rayo-Montano is Sao Paolo.

  Rayo-Montano was Colombia’s largest exporter of narcotics and successor to the infamous Pablo Escobar as head of the Medellin Drug Cartel.

• Caribbean, The Media, War on Drugs

  “The case for legalising drugs”

  05.28.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  In an opinion column published Sunday in the Trinidad & Tobago Express, Emile Elias puts forward a case for the legalisation of drugs. First he notes that while the Ministry of Health has run advertisements in the press quoting World Health Organisation figures that tobacco use is bad for your health, tobacco is still legal:
  

  WITCO [The West Indian Tobacco Company] in Trinidad, seemingly “smelling the coffee” some years ago, decided to diversify out of tobacco and invested some of their significant profits in a massive orchid farm. At the time I thought this was taking the concept of vertical integration a bit too far - first you kill them with cigarettes and then you sell them the flowers for the funeral!

  In spite of its awful ill-effects, tobacco is still legal, but the fight against tobacco is gaining ground. You cannot smoke on a BWIA [West Indies Airways] plane, or in most restaurants. However, possession and use of other drugs such as marijuana and cocaine are illegal.

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