A US court judge yesterday ruled that drug-indicted businessman Roger Khan must be held without bail and turned down yet another bail application when he appeared in court in New York.
US District Court Judge Dora L. Irizarry at the hearing said the court did not find that the defence has provided sufficient facts that Khan will be present for the duration of the hearing if granted bail.
In addition the judge said there is probable cause to believe Khan committed the charge in the indictment. The prosecution led by US Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf has also indicated to the court that they have close to 800 pages of evidence on Khan, wire taps and witness testimonies from Guyana and persons in the US who have been around Khan while he allegedly ran his drug trafficking organisation.
The judge also said Khan’s case is a complex one and since he faces a maximum of life imprisonment he is a flight risk. She recapped how Khan fled the US when he was facing charges with lighter sentences and failed to return on his own to answer those charges.
Khan also faces a superseding indictment which the judge requested be presented to her by the next court date scheduled for late February.
Khan’s attorney, Robert Simels argued similar points he had raised at past bail hearings.
He argued that Khan has most of his family residing in the US and therefore has no need to flee the country. He said too that Khan was never running from the US but running to it given the troubles he encountered back home in Guyana.
Khan is charged with conspiring to import cocaine into the US between January 2001 and March 2006. The US alleges that he is the leader of a cocaine trafficking organisation based in Georgetown. It also asserts that he was able to import huge amounts of cocaine into Guyana and then oversee its exportation to the US and elsewhere.
The US government charges 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 is citing a Guyanese drug trafficking organisation based in Queens, New York, which it alleges was supplied by Khan. The Queens organisation is said to have distributed hundreds of kilos of cocaine in a two-month period during the spring of 2003.
But Khan’s attorney Simels said the charge only states in broad terms that Khan was involved in drug trafficking. He said too that the strength of the government’s case was weakened by the fact that the documents seized from Khan’s office and home in Guyana were obtained illegally. As a result, he requested that the court conduct an inquiry into the circumstances of the seizure before giving any weight to the government’s claim.
According to reports from New York yesterday, Khan’s team has been successful in blocking the US government from obtaining the businessman’s briefcase among other items which are in Suriname. Khan was held in Suriname on a drug charge but later released and deported to Guyana. He was seized by the US authorities in Trinidad.
