Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee on Friday told Stabroek News that the supervisor, who has since been interdicted from duty, was caught on airport security cameras on January 12 instructing that the pink suitcase be taken off the conveyer belt. Had the suitcase remained on the belt, it would have gone through the scanner and the cocaine would have been detected.
It is not clear how the suitcase got on to the Delta Airline aircraft, however the cocaine was found at the John F Kennedy International Airport in New York. “He told someone to move the suitcase off the conveyer belt, which was wrong, he has no authority to do that,” the minister told this newspaper, when asked what the supervisor was caught on camera doing. Asked why the man has not been charged the minister said he could not comment on the police investigation. He, however, said the file on the matter is with the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) and that the supervisor remains interdicted.
Stabroek News was told that the supervisor dealt with a woman, Dorothy Sears, who checked the suitcase in, at the airport. Sears was subsequently busted with marijuana in her brassiere and the suitcase in New York. The supervisor had occupied the post at the airport for almost 13 years. It was during a customs examination of Sears’ carry-on luggage that she was reportedly observed acting “nervous, sweating profusely and avoiding eye contact.” She was asked if she had any checked luggage and responded in the negative. “A pat-down search was then conducted of the defendant’s person and a hard object was found concealed in the defendant’s bra. “The hard object was found to be a plastic bag containing a green leafy substance,” court documents said. Faced with this discovery, which was later determined to be marijuana, Sears then admitted that she had checked-in the pink suitcase and stated that she had been instructed by an individual in Guyana not to pick up the bag.
She told US authorities that she was to be paid US$6,000 for checking in the suitcase by an individual in Guyana. She said she thought initially the suitcase had marijuana but when she received it, she believed it contained cocaine because of its weight and the amount of money she was to receive.
