Outgoing Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy here, Bryan Hunt has urged patience as it relates to indictments of local drug barons saying that cases are being built in the background that can guarantee convictions.
“I am relatively confident that we are at a point now, in the relatively near term, we are going to see a greater ability on the part of CANU, SOCU, the Guyana Police Force to be able to arrest those that are at the medium and upper echelons of the narcotics pyramid here,” Hunt told Stabroek News in an interview last week, referring to the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit and the Special Organised Crime Unit.
The official, who leaves Guyana at the end of the month, said that while some persons might be frustrated as it seems that only low-tier cocaine traffickers are being prosecuted while drug lords roam with impunity, the building of cases that can stand up in court is complex and takes time.
“I certainly understand the public’s frustration. I think, however, what people need to remember is when one is building a criminal case, you always begin with the people who are actually perpetrating the crime and it’s from there you are able to work back to find the authors or conspirators that were involved in putting the crime together,” he asserted.
“So it is not surprising to me that the DEA [US Drug Enforcement Admin-istration] and CANU at the moment, are having the initial impact of their collaboration… being felt at the airports and the ports, that the first people that are being caught are those that are transporting the goods on their person or signing the final export documents for the consignment. That is to be expected,” he said.
“What CANU and DEA are also working on and what will take more time, is to try to use the information they gather through the arrest and questioning of the individuals that are caught at the ports of exit, to try to understand better the networks that support those individuals,” Hunt added.
The American diplomat said in the meantime, law enforcement here and overseas are building cases against the main drug dealers and he urged the public to continue to share whatever information they have about who is involved in these crimes with local law enforcement.
He pointed out that the citizenry must also recognise that some time is going to be required for Guyanese law enforcement to build these cases.
“It is relatively easy to build a case against the person who has the cocaine in their bag at the airport. It is much more complex to build the case against the person who may have paid them or have encouraged them to carry the cocaine and even more so, to get back to the top levels …or the trafficking organisation that actually ordered and planned it,” he asserted.
“As we have seen in the US and in Colombia, as we have seen in Laos, Vietnam…when you begin with taking down the folks with the illicit drugs on their person, ultimately you are able to get the information that is required to go backwards and be able to actually break the back of the actual trafficking organisation,” Hunt added.
Gold smuggling indictments
The American diplomat said the process is similar for building cases on gold smuggling though he pointed out that persons have already been charged in the US for violating provisions relating towards the illegal transport of the precious metal. Hunt said that although there are allegations that there is smuggling of large amounts of gold and laundered proceeds to the US, the process to prosecute here takes time.
“Now in terms of Guyana, I think it’s a few things. First of all, the records that are necessary to prosecute such individuals require sharing of information between Guyana and foreign customs services and it takes time for Guyana to go through the process to request for the foreign governments to respond to bring that information,” he said.
“And that is absolutely critical. It is critical that the amount declared in Guyana is the amount declared at the ultimate destination…so there is a certain lag time to be able to process those sorts of requests. In this particular case, it is important for law enforcement to have a full picture of the network before they go forward with the initial charges,” Hunt emphasised.
“The hope is that we can identify how the entire network is put together and be able to take it down rapidly as a single entity and that will take time to build those cases. And the worst thing that could happen is if a case were brought prematurely and the perpetrators were allowed to go free because they did not have the necessary evidence and paperwork in hand,” he said.
According to the US official, a person not having hands-on experience of how law enforcement works would be quick to question the lag in indictments but local and international heads of law enforcement agencies would explain why time is needed.
“I think when actually you sit down and talk with the leaders of law enforcement entities both US and foreign that were involved in this, these aren’t cases that you want to rush because if you rush them, you run the risk of the courts dismissing them for insufficient evidence,” he said.
Hunt disclosed that while cases are being built against those suspected of certain illegal activities here, the US does not currently have any pending extradition requests. He expressed confidence that when one is made, there will be no legal issues in getting those persons to face prosecution in the US.
“Right now we haven’t asked the Guyana government to extradite anyone and the reason we haven’t asked to extradite at this point is because we are continuing to build sufficient cases to ensure that extradition happens here and conviction happens in the United States,” Hunt said.
“As far as the United States is concerned, looking at the extradition treaty we have between Guyana and our country, it is fully operational and we don’t see anything that would prevent an extradition if we were to request one,” he added.
Notwithstanding, he pointed to the US’s last extradition case against self-confessed drug lord Barry Dataram. “The last one we had was dear Mr Dataram and we all know how that ended,” he said. Dataram was able to successfully block extradition to the US but an amendment to the law has since been passed to correct a lacuna in the local extradition laws.
Meantime, as it relates to jailed Guyanese drug kingpin Roger Khan, who was tried and jailed in the US, Hunt said at this point, US authorities have no plans to forfeit any of Khan’s assets.
“At this point, I don’t know of any plans for us to move under our legislation for forfeiting of assets that belong to Mr Khan, mainly because most of Mr Khan’s assets are here in Guyana so we wouldn’t have much of a [locus standi] to try to do that… If the Guyana government is going to do it? I don’t know. That is a question they will have to decide on and struggle with. But if they were to decide and were to request and were to require assistance, they can certainly request that from us. There are mutual legal assistance treaties but what they decide to do is mainly a question for them and not for me,” Hunt said.
