Even as Guyanese drug accused Roger Khan’s reported financial woes continue his lawyer says that these are being exacerbated by the fact that Khan has been locked away in a cell that only allows him three showers per week and no telephone privileges since being indicted on witness tampering charges.
One of Khan’s lawyers, Diarmuid White at the last status conference for his drug case told Judge Dora L Irizarry that Khan’s financial problems, which are forcing him to postpone the appointment of a new counsel to lead his defence team in the cocaine trial, continue.
He said the problem had worsened because Khan had been kept in a part of the prison called SHU, which limited his privileges. He asked Judge Irizarry for three weeks to iron out Khan’s defence team issue and this was granted.
Khan has faced the problem of finding a lead counsel after the one he had, Robert Simels, recently withdrew from the case after being arraigned on charges of witness tampering. It was expected that Khan would have retained a new trial counsel in place of Simels within two weeks of his withdrawal.
However, in a letter to Judge Irizarry earlier this month, White had stated that “Mr Khan has been unable to engage new trial counsel, due to financial constraints. Although Mr Khan is hopeful that he will be able to make the necessary financial arrangements, there is no assurance that such will be the case.”
It is not the first time since his incarceration Khan has found himself in the SHU; as early last year he was placed in the same section of the Metropolitan Correctional Centre (MCC). At that time Simels in his bid to get Khan removed from there had branded it “a lock-up for terrorists.”
Simels at the time had said that Khan could only have one telephone call a month and no attorney’s call while in the SHU. In addition, he had been told by an official at the jail that the MCC made up for the lack of telephone calls by permitting liberal visitation by counsel. “This is of course a ludicrous notion, that permitting counsel to go to the MCC to visit an inmate equates with a client having the ability to call counsel or that the client’s restrictive conditions do not violate due process,” Simels argued at the time.
Khan has been in the US jail since 2006 following his arrest in Trinidad on an 18-count indictment for drug trafficking and heading a criminal enterprise in Guyana. The arrests of his lawyer Simels and his assistant and Khan on charges of attempting to “eliminate” or “neutralise” witnesses has thrown another spanner in the works of Khan’s case as it is likely to push back the start of his trial.
