Customs Anti Narcotics Unit (CANU) officer Shemika Tennant, one of the four persons charged with conspiracy in the pink suitcase cocaine case has accused Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Shalimar Ali-Hack of acting out of malice in instructing that she be charged because she had searched two of her sisters at the airport.
Tennant said when Ali-Hack rendered her advice to institute charges against her she was aware that her sisters had requested that she be disciplined. The woman, through her lawyer Nigel Hughes, has since applied for a writ of certiorari in the High Court in an effort to have the charge dismissed.
In her affidavit, Tennant said that on February 1, she was on duty when she stopped and searched two female passengers. This was after the January 22 date when the pink suitcase with the cocaine slipped through the local airport. Tennant said she stopped the women because they fit the profile of suspicious passengers, since they were wearing loose clothing capable of concealing suspicious packages. During the search, she said, the women said they were the sisters of the DPP and she informed them that at the end of the search they could make a complaint if they felt the search was improperly conducted. At the end of the search, both women signed the search book stating that they had no complaints to make about the conduct of the search.
However, Ayesha Hack subsequently filed a complaint against Tennant. Hack, in a letter copied to several persons, including President Bharrat Jagdeo, said: “She ought to be made accountable for all her unlawful actions. She needs to be stopped so as not to do this to others again especially someone like myself who is an American citizen. I will also be notifying the authorities at the USA consulate as to how their citizens were treated in Guyana. Justice needs to be done to those who abused their authority for their own personal vendetta!”
She concluded the letter: “I trust that the person who subjected me to this cruel and inhumane treatment and who instructed her to do so will be disciplined in the strongest terms and feel the full force of the law.”
According to Tennant, on the day after the search she received a letter from her Supervisor Mohanram Persaud, in which he informed her that the women were relatives of the DPP. He further noted that although this fact was brought to Tennant’s attention, she went ahead to search their checked-in luggage at the back. As a result, he advised that in such cases she report it to him directly before searches are carried out and he would instruct what course of action should be taken.
Tennant said she was later informed by the head of CANU that the DPP had directed that her services be terminated as a result of the incident. In her letter, a copy of which was attached to Tennant’s affidavit, Ayesha Hack said Tennant never introduced herself to them and humiliated them by strip searching them in a room. She reportedly told Hack’s younger sister, Rehanna Gaffoor, that she had no problem with her but she was being strip searched because of her [Ayesha Hack’s] attitude. Hack said she had initially challenged the woman when her passport was requested and this angered the woman who again demanded the document in a “threatening and hostile manner.” She said when it was her time to be searched she stripped to her underwear, during which time she was “shocked and dumbfounded” and was feeling “completely helpless and intimidated.” After the search, she said Tennant, in her intimidating manner, pointed out a part of the page where she could add a comment but threatened that if anything negative were written she would file a bigger complaint and get witnesses. “Under duress, I wrote, ‘No comment at this time,’” Hack noted.
Hack said it was only after Tennant had also searched their luggage that she identified herself as a CANU officer and said she was carrying out instructions. She “challenged my sister and I to file a complaint since she expected our sister the DPP to do so.”
Hack requested an investigation into the matter and said in her view “the person that ordered me to strip naked and then patted me down and then ripped open my suitcase acted unlawfully and arbitrarily.”
She added that she had already cleared security and that Tennant clearly had some “ulterior motive. “She completely humiliated and embarrassed me as a woman and moreso as a Muslim woman, who takes pride in covering herself.
Not to mention the emotional distress that she caused to my sisters and other members of the family. She proved to me that she and others could do whatever without just and lawful reasons.”
Instruction
Meanwhile, Tennant said Officer Muniram Persaud, who has also been charged with conspiracy to traffic in narcotics, instructed her not to search the pink suitcase, claiming it contained money belonging to a relative of his. Tennant said that on January 12 she was manning the scanner when she observed a small pink suitcase with square objects and showed her supervisor Mohanram Persaud who instructed her to search the suitcase. The owner was paged but Tenant said she was later informed that he waived the suitcase and it was placed back with the other suitcases. She then requested that the passenger be paged again.
Shortly after he approached her at the scanner and instructed her to go outside where he told her that the suitcase belonged to his family and he had the customs documents. “…He further informed me that he has to do my assessment at the end of every month. That he instructed me that he was waiving the suitcase and that I should not make an entry in the Delta Search Record Book,” Tennant said.
However, after the flight had departed and Persaud had gone off duty she made an entry in the book to the effect that she had pulled the suitcase to be searched and was instructed to waive it by him.
She was subsequently informed that the suitcase was found with drugs in the US and was later requested to provide a written statement to the police.
According to her, at that time she did not remember that she had made the entry in the search book. It was an inspector of police who pointed out to her that she had made the entry in the book.
Tennant said when Muniram Persaud was interviewed by the police, he admitted that he had given her instructions to waive the suitcase.
According to Tennant, it was after the incident with Ali-Hack’s sisters that her supervisor Mohanram Persaud on February in a confrontation with her at police headquarters for the first time alleged that she told him that she had searched the pink suitcase and that it had lots of money. She said she denied the allegation. On March 13, she was summoned to the office of the CANU head and was told the DPP instructed that she should be dismissed and to show cause why she should not be dismissed. On March 16 she was charged with conspiracy based on the advice of the DPP.
In her advice to the police, Ali-Hack, among other things, said that the ink with which Tennant wrote the entry about the directive given by Officer Muniram Persaud in the search book was a different colour than other entries which “suggests it was not done at the time it ought to have been done.”
According to Tennant, she was advised by her lawyer that the tone and tenor of the DPP’s advice revealed a bias, especially when she said Officer Muniram Persaud “went to Tennant and told her he was waiving the bag and she made no objection.” “This statement implies that I had a duty or authority to object to the instructions I received from my superior Officer Persaud when he told me that he was waiving the suitcase when in effect I had no such authority or power,” Tennant said.
Tennant and Persaud along with former police constable Maurice Smith and Rodrick Peterkin, were charged with conspiracy on March 16, just two months after a pink suitcase with over 50 pounds of cocaine slipped through the Timehri airport and was later intercepted by US authorities. They were released on $35,000 bail each.
The joint charge alleges that on January 12, at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA), Timehri, they conspired with each other and Dorothy Sears and with other persons unknown to export 24 kilogrammes, 600 grammes of cocaine. Sears had been busted with marijuana in her brassiere and the pink suitcase containing the cocaine at the JFK airport in New York.
