The nexus between narco-trafficking and murders is unquestionable. In certain cases, according to comments made to this newspaper by Head of the Police Criminal Investigation Department Assistant Commissioner Seelall Persaud, some ‘execution-murders’ have been “drug-related.”
The law enforcement agencies have not been able to bring the illegal narcotics trade under control and, as long as the trade thrives, drug-related killings will continue. Traffickers will kill to extend their turf, eliminate rivals and punish delinquent debtors.
In the case of one murder in the Upper Demerara-Berbice region, a quantity of aviation fuel was discovered on the “cattle trail.” Witnesses testified to having seen and heard aeroplanes suspected to be involved in narco-trafficking landing and taking off, evidently after delivering their cargo and having been refuelled by local collaborators.
Narco-traffickers with knowledge of the hinterland can land foreign light aircraft on unused airstrips or isolated tracts along all-weather roadways. With their powerful all-terrain vehicles and SUVs, smugglers can also evade static police checkpoints. With their speedboats, they use the waterways to avoid detection by the inert, inland police stations.
The fact is that transnational crime has been transformed but the Police Force has never been reformed. It does not possess the resources to deal with the savvy crooks who have prospered over the past decade of indulgence. The result is that large-scale traffickers import huge amounts of cocaine into the country. Small-time couriers and mules who try to smuggle out picayune amounts of the drug through the airports are the ones usually entrapped by the law-enforcement agencies. But the drugs keep coming in.
Hence, the casualties of the gang-warfare to control the cocaine trade continue to mount. In the case of the murders of Romeo De Agrella and his son Clint De Agrella in the Barima-Waini region last year, two suspects – Lloyd Roberts and Sean Belfield – were known employees of the drug lord Roger Khan. Crime Chief Seelall Persaud had told Stabroek News that the de Agrella murders were “drug-related.” Crew members of the ill-fated vessel Island Princess – Titus Buckery Nascimento, Mahendra Singh, Ryan Chin and Rickford Bannister – whose bullet-riddled and disembowelled bodies were discovered in the Essequibo River last September were probably involved in the drug trade.
Farouk Kalamadeen was kidnapped and beheaded in April 2008; Ganga Persaud was strangled and tied up in his car trunk and Arjune Singh was shot dead at a police roadblock on Middleton Street – both in May 2008. Raphael Piggott – who was shot dead in Cummings Lodge in November 2008 – was carrying a large amount of foreign currency and 8 kg of cocaine in his car.
Thakur Persaud – the owner of a mining dredge – was shot dead in June last year on a trail 135 km up the Berbice River. Persaud had been charged in connection with the discovery of over 100 kg of cocaine in fish glue at Enterprise, in May 2007 but the case was dismissed. Ramzan Ali was found dead with a plastic bag taped over his head in the trunk of an abandoned car at Coldingen, also on the East Coast, in July. Last week’s shooting of Rajendra Motilall Sonilall – a fish vendor and exporter – of Mon Repos, East Coast Demerara, seems to follow the trend of ‘execution-murders.’
The Police Force’s Criminal Investigation Department and Counter-Narcotics Branch and the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit need help if they are to be enabled to counter countrywide narco-trafficking. Without the augmentation of their means to conduct long-range patrols, investigate these cases, interrogate witnesses and prosecute culprits, the police can neither control the drug trade nor stop the killings which it causes.
