Each dazzling day, next to the muddy, grassy verges of the busy main road along the eastern bank of the murky Demerara River, a few families dry racks of freshly gutted, still bloody, thickly salted Atlantic fish openly spread out under the harsh, blinding sun. With the sulphurous stench discernible for miles, mobs of black buzzing flies gather in the heavy haze for the rank feast settling on the latest catch and the stale stretch of shrimps.
Surely a lot stinks in funky Guyana than just the oceanic bounty laid across these crudely cobbled together branches. The fetid fish traditionally selected by the industrious few is often the ubiquitous salmon or locally-termed “banga-mary” a white-flesh feast, best suited for serious seasonings and deep frying. It is also a constant courier of cheap choice for concealing cocaine, judging from the countless seizures of frozen seafood and compromised perishables, shamefully more out, than in, the beloved Cooperative Republic.
Thinking about it, the perpetual procession of camouflage drugs and a few of the perpetrators must have largely sauntered past right in front of those very people and their stacks of dessicated marine life, on the merry way to the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA). Considering the frequency with which cocaine is being intercepted, one can only at best hazard a guess as to the total quantity that is actually flown out and trafficked daily, and the amount that may make it through the hyper-vigilant United States (US) Homeland Security and the harried customs personnel in Canada, and other territories across the Caribbean, Europe and West Africa.
For instance the latest trial of siblings Shafair Alli and his sister Lazeena Imrazi relates to charges over 9.5 kilogrammes of cocaine found on June 8 last inside their frozen fish Amerijet bond shipment destined for New York. Alli’s priceless response to Police Corporal Delon Cole is absolutely revealing, “Oh s***t officer, what y’all could do for me?” Stabroek News reports.
The influence of narcotics trafficking is evident in Guyana’s criminal justice systems and other sectors – bluntly states the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), which notes the Government’s cooperation is limited by “resource constraints” and “high levels of corruption.”
“Traffickers are attracted by the country’s poorly monitored ports, remote airstrips, intricate river networks, porous land borders and weak security sector capacity.” It points out that smugglers easily transit our vulnerable boundaries across Brazil, Venezuela and Suriname with cocaine often stashed in legitimate commodities and smuggled via commercial maritime vessels, air transport, human couriers or various postal methods.
“Porous borders and extensive rainforest make Guyana a safe haven for traffickers” flatly concludes the 11th Report to the US Congress on the Operation of the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act, prepared by the Office of the US Trade Representative, dated December 30 2015.
Recently, the world learnt a bit about the alarming extent to which this small nation has found itself caught up in an increasingly dangerous vortex, as a major drug distribution centre. If the key airport seems bad enough, then the unpatrolled sweeping seas must be a never-ending nightmare.
For the turbid waters of Guyana, are where a nondescript little, red and white tug nonchalantly stood for two days last year unnoticed, calmly waiting to make a rendezvous on the high seas with 3.2 tonnes of Class A cocaine carefully wrapped in 128 huge plastic bales, and then cunningly secreting the cargo in a watertight compartment within a ballast tank hidden in the ship’s bows.
The consignment would go on to make history, becoming the United Kingdom’s (UK) greatest drug bust, a monster 512 million Pounds Sterling shipment that was only just intercepted off the west coast, because the French customs investigations service DNRED tipped off their British counterpart, on the evening of April 20 2015.
But the Tanzanian-registered MV Hamal, fittingly named after the Arabic word for porter, carrier or bearer had casually come to Port Georgetown just about a month before, curiously empty of goods, and apparently aimlessly cruising across the Atlantic Ocean, from the Spanish Canary Island of Tenerife, and Istanbul, Turkey. For the three month trial the UK National Crime Agency (NCA) worked with the Guyanese to trace the vessel’s location and prove that several of the crew had indeed been in the capital contradicting the doctored log books. The nine certainly were not in town to sightsee the St George’s Cathedral, Castellani House or the Botanical Gardens, when they departed, stopping for that critical12-15 hour period and making their circuitous way to the other side of the world.
It took three long tense days for a search team of boats and planes to eventually pinpoint the Hamal in the vast North Sea about 100 miles east of Aberdeeen, Scotland, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported. Halted by the Royal Navy frigate HMS Somerset and Border Force Cutter HMC Valiant, before its Netherlands’ rendezvous it was boarded in international waters with the first time permission of the Tanzanian authorities granted within a narrow 24 hours.
What the Brits encountered on the Hamal would prove to be straight out of a James Bond-type Ian Fleming novella. Close to midnight on April 24 2015, after 14 exhausting hours working in severely cramped spaces a group of highly specialized officers, the National Deep Rummage Team, spotted traces of cocaine on the tip of the heavy duty drill they used to bore into a recently welded plate.
Head of the NCA’s border policing team in Scotland, John McGowan recalled that the search team had started by pumping dry all of the ship’s fuel, water and ballast tanks before squeezing inside with breathing apparatus and head torches. He told the BBC, it would take another day to cut a big enough hole to see the neatly stashed packages in the tank.
Realising that there had to be another way in, the officers discovered fresh concrete on the floor of a cabin, camouflaged under a cabinet bolted to the floor. It took them a further three days using breathing apparatus to bring out one bale at a time from the crammed hatch, for forensic examination.
The total cocaine confiscated by all the police forces in England, Wales and the border cops in 2014/15 was 3.4 tonnes,” so “this was effectively a year’s worth of seizures in a single activity” McGowan declared triumphantly – a rare victory in the cocaine codfather conflict
ID hopes all of the big fishes behind the Hamal may one day be netted but she is heartened that the boat’s Captain, Mumin Sahin and deputy Emin Ozmen, while claiming innocence, were at least jailed for 22 and 20 years respectively.
