The return of convicted drug trafficker Roger Khan has been delayed due to Hurricane Dorian, Police Commissioner Leslie James said on Friday.
“I understand because of the hurricane we have had in the Caribbean recently, his arrival has been delayed,” James told reporters on the sidelines of the commissioning of the Parfaite Harmonie Police Station.
Hurricane Dorian lingered for days in the Caribbean and threatened Florida. The storm was expected to approach the coastline of South and North Carolinas by Thursday and Friday.
Khan was scheduled to be deported to Guyana but was told at the last minute that the journey was postponed, his attorney Glenn Hanoman told Stabroek News on Thursday.
According to James, the Guyana Police Force has been made aware of his return and while it is awaiting his arrival, no definite date has been given to it.
Questioned on whether there are any special arrangements in place for Khan’s arrival, James responded in the negative. He emphasised that “…we are awaiting his return. Mr Khan, just like any other person will return under normal circumstances. There is nothing special about Mr Khan.”
Khan was not given any explanation as to why the trip was postponed on Thursday and he remained an inmate at a Florida detention centre.
His attorney related to this newspaper that Khan was scheduled to fly from Miami to Guyana on Thursday but his flight was cancelled at the last minute.
“He was (scheduled) but he didn’t make the flight. I don’t know what happened,” Hanoman said, while adding “…I don’t know what went wrong. They didn’t tell him anything.”
Hanoman said when he spoke to Khan, around 7.30 pm on Thursday, he seemed anxious to return home.
He said that unlike most persons earmarked for deportation that turn to the courts to “fight” the deportation, Khan wanted to return home. “He wants to come home,” Hanoman said.
Khan was recently released from prison after serving almost ten years of a 15-year sentence for drug trafficking.
Khan is returning to Guyana in the middle of a political stalemate in which his alleged deeds are constantly invoked. Given that he was known to be connected with the drug trade and to have mobilised a private mini army, there are many questions about his role in a series of events during what President David Granger has dubbed ‘The Troubles.’
Under the Bharrat Jagdeo administration, Khan was thought to have been given free rein to go after persons he determined to be criminals in the period following the 2002 jail-break when five escapees triggered a crime wave the likes of which had never before been seen in the country.
Khan was sentenced after he pleaded guilty to trafficking in 150 kilogrammes of cocaine, witness tampering and gun-running.
In October of 2009, while sentencing Khan, US Federal Judge Dora Irizarry had stated that following his prison term he would be placed on five years’ supervised release, but would more than likely be deported.
She had warned him that if he re-entered the US illegally after deportation, he would be arrested and sentenced to a much longer prison term than 15 years.
In her comments during the sentencing, Judge Irizarry had stated that while no sentence imposed on Khan would make right whatever atrocities he had committed, the fact that he would serve time in a US prison meant that justice has been served. She had sentenced him to two terms of 15-years and one term of 10 years, all of which ran concurrently.
