Earlier this month in Bridgetown, Supreme Court Justice Kaye Goodridge handed down sentences on six Guyanese – Rohan Shastri Rambarran of Georgetown; Lemme Michael Campbell and his wife Somwattie Persaud of Georgetown; Wayne Gavin Green of Georgetown and Christopher Bacchus and his wife Dianne Bacchus of St Michael, Barbados – who were all convicted in Barbados’s biggest narco-trafficking trial.
Rambarran, the mastermind, received the exemplary sentence of 125 years in prison – 15 years for the importation, 15 years for possession and 25 years for trafficking in cannabis; and 20 years for importation, 20 years for possession and 30 years for trafficking in cocaine.
The six were convicted a few months ago on charges arising out of a police seizure of hundreds of kilogrammes of cannabis and cocaine concealed in a shipment of timber from Georgetown. The public learned of the patient police surveillance from the time that the timber was off-loaded from a container; the painstaking accumulation of evidence and the meticulous prosecution by a powerful team led personally by the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Meanwhile, back in Georgetown, Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee, together with Head of the Guyana Police Force’s Criminal Investigation Department Seelall Persaud and Head of the Customs and Anti-Narcotics Unit James Singh, called another press conference last month. The press was entertained with an eye-popping power point presentation meant to prove that more narcotics had been seized this year than last year.
But the numbers mean nothing. The reality is that the country’s two counter-narcotics agencies have failed consistently to identify the Georgetown sources in the narcotics supply chain or to interdict exports to Bridgetown and elsewhere. As a result, local wholesalers and shippers who supply distributors like Rambarran remain untouched.
What Messrs Rohee, Singh and Persaud need to tell the press about is the conduct of investigations into the cartels which have the capability to construct 1,000-metre-long airstrips where planeloads of cocaine are imported. Guyana is part of the continental landmass and, over the years, damaged or burnt-out foreign aeroplanes have been found at several hinterland airstrips – Bartica, Kwapau, Mabura, Orealla, Tacama and Wanatoba. Investigations into the identities and activities of narco-merchants in this jurisdiction always seem to peter out.
Minister Rohee, in particular, also needs to tell the press how the administration managed not to implement its own National Drug Strategy Master Plan or to make satisfactory arrangements for the establishment of a US Drug Enforcement Administration office in Georgetown. Bridgetown has had such an office for the past twenty years.
The US Department of State − in its most recent International Narcotics Control Strategy Report − praised the Government of Barbados for developing “…a robust coast guard presence …designed to stem the flow of narcotics transiting Barbados.” The same Report noted that the Government of Guyana achieved few of the original goals of its own National Drug Strategy Master Plan, a failure that “…allowed drug traffickers to move shipments via river, air, and land without meaningful resistance.”
In imposing her sentences on the six Guyanese, Barbadian Justice Goodridge warned that illegal narcotics wreaked havoc that could lead to the erosion of the social fabric as well as the creation of a myriad of social problems, and anyone caught would feel the full weight of the law.
If only Georgetown’s criminal justice system could be more like Bridgetown’s!
