-has no objection to pre-sentence report

Lawyers for confessed Guyanese drug trafficker Roger Khan have written US judge Dora Irizarry requesting an earlier date for sentencing, even suggesting next month, ahead of the scheduled November date which was previously announced.

The US government is to respond to Khan’s request by August 17. Judge Irizarry made an order to this effect yesterday.

The lawyers wrote that Khan has seen his pre-sentence report and has no objections.  According to the correspondence signed by attorney Diarmuid White and dated August 5, 2009, Khan is requesting that the November 6 scheduled hearing be advanced to a date in September convenient to the court.

In the letter seen by this newspaper, the attorneys said, there appears to be no reason “to wait three months for sentencing”, adding that “it is the hope of Mr. Khan, who has long been housed at the MCC, that he will be sentenced in the near future so that he may be designated and transferred to another institution”.

Khan attorneys said too that they have written to the Probation Officer in the case, with a courtesy copy mailed to the court, advising that Khan is making no objections to the Pre-sentence Report.

Khan, who pleaded guilty on March 16 this year, had previously complained about being housed at the Metropolitan Correction Centre (MCC) through former attorney Robert Simels.  He was moved to the federal prison two years ago and was placed later in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) of the facility.

Khan’s attorneys had filed court applications requesting that he be removed from the special housing facility, but the US government challenged it on the grounds that his confinement is based on non-punitive, administrative and security concerns that are best evaluated by the prison administrators.

Simels, who is currently on trial for witness tampering, had complained, among other things that the SHU is for persons who are suspected of terrorist activities.

The MCC is an administrative facility housing male and female pre-trial and holdover inmates. The jailhouse is located in lower Manhattan, New York adjacent to Foley Square and across the street from the Federal courthouse.

The US government had noted that while Khan had orally complained about the issues in SHU he never requested formal grievance forms which the manager has at all times and regularly distributes upon inmates’ requests.

Khan was sanctioned in February 2007 at MCC following a Disciplinary Committee hearing into a report that he was in possession of chewing gum. The Guyanese had lied about the gum and later admitted that it was given to him by his lawyer.

The prosecution had noted at the time that while chewing gum may seem innocuous in a non-correctional setting, “it poses security concerns in a penal institution. Chewing gum can be used to make imprints of keys and to jam locks”.

Khan has pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and witness tampering charges, in addition to a gun running charge. He was charged with conspiring to import cocaine into the US over a five-year period, from January 2001 to March 2006. The US government said that he was the leader of a cocaine trafficking organisation based in Georgetown.

It also asserted that he was able to import huge amounts of cocaine into Guyana, and then oversee exportation to the US and elsewhere. The US government had charged that a significant amount of the cocaine distributed by Khan went to the Eastern District of New York for further distribution.

As an example, it cited a Guyanese drug trafficking organisation based in Queens, New York, which it said was supplied by Khan. The Queens organisation was said to have distributed hundreds of kilos of cocaine in a two-month period during the spring of 2003.