Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Shalimar Ali-Hack has acknowledged in an affidavit that there was an incident involving her and pink suitcase cocaine accused, Maurice Smith at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA) on October 15, 2009, but said it had no bearing on the present case.
In an affidavit which was released yesterday, following an order made in the Full Court by Justice William Ramlal and Justice Roxane George, Ali Hack acknowledged that she and her husband were outgoing passengers on that day and that Smith had caused the dog to sniff her suitcase and had searched it. She said she later requested that disciplinary action be taken against him.
Smith and his co-accused, Roderick Peterkin in their affidavits had alleged among other things that her decision to have them charged was derived out of malice and extraneous considerations, was in bad faith and unreasonable.
When the matter came up again yesterday, Justice Ramlal and Justice George threw out arguments by Ali-Hack’s lawyer, Senior Counsel Doodnauth Singh, which among others things stated that the court had no jurisdiction to hear the case.
Justice George who read the decision to the court, which cited a number of cases in support, said that a prima facie case has been established and Ali-Hack must respond to the allegations made by the two accused, former police constable Smith and Roraima Airways Aviation Agent Peterkin.
Ali-Hack was absent from the court proceedings and when her attorney was informed that she had ten days to file the affidavit in answer he told the court that they only needed two days since the affidavit was already prepared. Stabroek News has since seen the affidavit.
In his initial arguments, Singh had objected to the application before the Full Court, which was filed by attorney-at-law Nigel Hughes on behalf of the two. Hughes had secured an order from the Full Court which was directed to the DPP and had called on her to show cause why her advice to institute conspiracy charges against his clients should not be quashed.
But Singh rejected Hughes’ arguments and said there was nothing in the affidavits filed in the case to support the contention that the DPP acted out of malice. He had submitted that the Full Court in the Barry Dataram case made an incorrect decision and therefore the court has no jurisdiction because Dataram was wrongly decided.
Unattended
Meanwhile, Ali-Hack’s affidavit seen yesterday acknowledged that there was an incident that involved her and Smith at the CJIA. She explained that she and her husband were outgoing passengers and after checking in were about to board when they were informed that her suitcase was found unattended on the tarmac. Ali-Hack said she was also told that someone, who she learnt was Smith, insisted that she should open the suitcase, failing which she would not be allowed to board the flight.
“In those circumstances I opened the suitcase which had my personal clothing only and the said suitcase was searched by Mr Smith. Upon my return to Guyana, I wrote a letter to the Commissioner of Police informing him of what had transpired when I was leaving Guyana… and I requested that disciplinary action be taken,” Ali-Hack said.
She submitted her decision to advise that Smith be charged had no connection to the incident.
Smith, in his affidavit, had said that on the day in question he was at the airport with the dog Argon, when he was contacted by a customer service agent who informed him that a suitcase had fallen from the cart conveying the suitcases to the airplane and he wanted a canine security check to be conducted to ensure that nothing illegal had been placed in the suitcase.
He said the customer service agent paged the passengers whose suitcase had fallen and it turned out to be the DPP and her husband, neither of whom protested the search, which did not unearth anything out of the ordinary.
However, he said upon the DPP’s return to Guyana, he was summoned to his superior’s office, where he was told that the DPP had requested that his service with the force be terminated because he caused the dog to sniff her suitcase.
A statement was requested from him, which he submitted, and his service was not terminated.
He said on February 5, 2010 when the pink suitcase went through Timehri, the dog Argon did not display any signs that he had detected the presence of cocaine on any of the outgoing suitcases on Delta Flight 384.
In her recommendation to have Smith charged, Ali-Hack noted that Smith in his statement said he did not get any response from the dog for that flight. “According to the photographs and information submitted by the US law enforcement agents, the suitcase had 22 bricked shaped objects weighing 24 kilogrammes 622.6 grammes that tested positive for cocaine. Given this quantity of cocaine, it ought to have been detected by the dog. This is further supported by the US CPB Canine that alerted the officials to the suitcase at JFK.
This ought to have been done at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport,” Ali-Hack said in her report to Crime Chief Seelall Persaud. It was based on those findings that she recommended that Smith be charged.
Ali-Hack’s only response to the reference made about sections of her advice was to say that “it was wholly improper for my advice to the crime chief to be circulated to any other person.”
And in relation to Peterkin, she pointed out that while the accused admitted that he did not include the name Dorothy Sears — the woman caught with the cocaine in the pink suitcase in the US — on the baggage search area forms but included the name Indra Sanasie, he failed to mention that both persons’ bags were waived. Yet “he deliberately recorded only Indra Sanasie as being waived, not Dorothy Sears,” the DPP said.
“He further pretends in his further statement that he mistakenly did not record Dorothy Sears. Only two persons’ bags were waived and he omitted to mention one (the one that was filled with cocaine) and which he knew was waived, and expects that his creditability will remain intact.”
Peterkin’s affidavit had said that Ali-Hack, in her report, pointed out that his duties included writing up the Delta baggage bag search log. According to her, he did not write the passenger Dorothy Sears’ name for the Delta 384 flight but instead there was the name Indra Sanasie. “There is no other record that there was a passenger by the name of Indra Sanasie on the Delta 384 flight and that the person’s bag was searched,” she noted.
But Hughes argued yesterday that the DPP’s statement was erroneous, since there is indeed a passenger by the name of Indra Sanasie recorded on the Delta flight manifest and his client did record that the said passenger’s bag was pulled to be searched but a CANU officer waived the search.
In relation to Sears, Peterkin said that the DPP overlooked and ignored the fact that in the “baggage make up control list for priority passengers, I attached the baggage stub for Dorothy Sears.”
The case comes up again next Wednesday at 10:30 hrs.
Smith and Peterkin, along with Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) employees Muniram Persaud and Shemika Tennant, were charged with conspiracy on March 11; just two months after a pink suitcase with over 50 pounds of cocaine slipped through the Timehri airport and was later intercepted by US authorities. They were released on $35,000 bail each.
The joint charge alleges that on January 12, at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA), Timehri, they conspired with each other, Dorothy Sears and with other persons unknown to export 24 kilogrammes, 600 grammes of cocaine. Sears had been busted with marijuana in her brassiere and the pink suitcase containing the cocaine at the JFK airport in New York.
