A Nigerian man was yesterday sentenced to four and a half years in jail after he was found guilty of trying to mail cocaine through the Guyana Post Office Corporation (GPOC).
At the conclusion of his trial, Paul Ateli, 42, was found guilty of narcotics trafficking by Magistrate Sueanna Lovell at the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court.
Magistrate Lovell said the prosecution had made out a case beyond reasonable doubt against Ateli, who was charged in January last year with trying to mail 510 grammes of cocaine.
Ateli, who was unrepresented by an attorney yesterday, told the court that the case against him was a fabrication. He further stated that he had been going to court to clear his name because he did not commit the offence. “I can’t believe I have been found guilty,” he said.
Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) Prosecutor Oswald Massiah asked the magistrate to take into consideration all the circumstances of the case when handing down her sentence. He said that Ateli and others should be taught a lesson because they feel they can enter Guyana and do as they please, embarrassing the country in the process.
The magistrate subsequently sentenced Ateli to a 54-month-long sentence.
Ateli, a language translator, had been charged in January last year. It was alleged then that on January 3, 2012, at the GPOC, at North Road, he had in his possession 510 grammes of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.
The court was told that he and a woman, cosmetologist Debbie Barker, 49, of 2655 South Ruimveldt Park, attempted to mail a number of packets containing false nails. The packets were pierced by officials who then discovered a powdery substance within them.
Ateli claimed that he was not a permanent resident of Guyana but a frequent visitor and that he had intended to spend two weeks here before returning to Nigeria.
Massiah, at the arraignment, had noted that while Ateli had furnished the court with a Lot 22 Delhi Street, Prashad Nagar address, he had given investigators a Suriname address as well. He also said that while Ateli told the court he would be here for two weeks, he told investigators two years. Additionally, the prosecutor said, CANU’s investigations had revealed that Ateli had entered Guyana illegally from Suriname.
Barker was separately charged and her lawyers, Mortimer Codette and Paul Fung-a-Fat, contended that Ateli had manipulated her into doing his bidding. “It was his [Ateli’s] manipulation of my client to do his bidding, unknowing to her what was in the package she was attempting to post that led to her arrest,” Codette said, while adding that it was information provided by Barker that led to Ateli’s arrest—a task he claimed lawmen had been trying to accomplish for the past two years.
But Massiah said the fact that Barker’s detention later led to Ateli’s arrest did not exonerate her from charges. He said the prosecution would lead evidence to show that there was a prior arrangement whereby Barker had supplied Ateli with her photograph to be used in the production of a false identification (ID) card, bearing the name Dawn Ayesha Jordan. He claimed that Barker equipped herself with what appeared to be a light bill for a Lot 52 Victoria Avenue, Eccles residence, and not the Lot 2655 South Ruimveldt Park address she told the court was hers, in order to post the package. These, Massiah argued, were clear acts of deception.
