Jamaican deportee who escaped airport now fears for his life in Trinidad

(Trinidad Guardian) The Ja­maican man want­ed by lo­cal au­thor­i­ties for es­cap­ing from a hold­ing room at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Fri­day says he is now fear­ful for his life.

The man has been in con­tact with Guardian Me­dia and said he was con­tact­ed by a man claim­ing to be the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer who re­quest­ed a meet­ing with him.

In a con­fer­ence call be­tween the man, him­self and Guardian Me­dia, the man was asked to iden­ti­fy him­self and he gave his name (omit­ted) and said he is the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer.

When the Ja­maican man, iden­ti­fied by po­lice as O’Shane Bai­ley, told him he un­der­stands the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer is a woman, Char­maine Gand­hi-An­drews, the man said, “There could be more than one chief you know.”

He then dis­con­nect­ed the call.

Bai­ley, who is still us­ing his in­ter­na­tion­al phone num­ber, said he feels like he is be­ing set up.

“I think the of­fi­cer whom I paid the mon­ey to gave this guy my num­ber be­cause he is in­sist­ing we meet and he does not want to give de­tails about him­self,” he said. “I think they want to set me up to get me out of the way.”

He said he was un­able to find an at­tor­ney to fa­cil­i­tate his sur­ren­der to po­lice yes­ter­day as he had ini­tial­ly planned.

He asked for as­sis­tance in find­ing an at­tor­ney who can deal with im­mi­gra­tion mat­ters and even­tu­al­ly made con­tact with Sub­has Pan­day. The two in­tend to meet some­time to­day to dis­cuss the sur­ren­der.

Bai­ley was de­nied en­try on Fri­day and said he was left in a room while wait­ing for a flight back to Ja­maica.

He was de­nied en­try by Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials as he was told he has pend­ing crim­i­nal charges in his home­land.

The man claims that he did not es­cape the hold­ing room but was let out by an im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer af­ter the of­fi­cer asked him for US$500.

He said the of­fi­cer promised to leave the door to the room un­locked in ex­change for the mon­ey and promised to re­turn his pass­port on Mon­day for an ad­di­tion­al US$300.

He said when he tried to reach the of­fi­cer on Sun­day, all calls to the num­ber he had been giv­en went straight to voice­mail.

Guardian Me­dia was un­able to con­tact Gand­hi-An­drew on Mon­day.