Trinidad: Minister’s ‘former relative’ and 3 others to stand trial over drug bust

(Trinidad Guardian) Four peo­ple ac­cused of op­er­at­ing a drug traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tion in West­moor­ings have been com­mit­ted to stand tri­al.

Mag­is­trate Re­han­na Ho­sein made the de­ci­sion at the end of the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry of the case at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

 
Ho­sein ruled that state pros­e­cu­tors pre­sent­ed a pri­ma fa­cie case against Krys­tiana Sankar, Yan­nis Peb­bles Au­gus­tine, Jer­von Cole, and At­i­ba Eligon, which could pos­si­bly re­sult in their con­vic­tions af­ter an even­tu­al tri­al in the High Court.

Af­ter de­liv­er­ing her de­ci­sion, Ho­sein asked each ac­cused in­di­vid­u­al­ly if they planned to present an al­i­bi, tes­ti­fy in their de­fence or call wit­ness­es.

All four said that they would in­di­cate whether or not they wish to raise al­i­bis at a lat­er date.

They al­so chose to re­main silent and not call any wit­ness­es. De­spite their in­di­ca­tions, they can de­cide to change their po­si­tion be­fore the case goes to tri­al.

Be­fore end­ing her in­volve­ment in the case, Ho­sein is­sued fresh bail to the group.

Ho­sein agreed to re­duce the $6 mil­lion bail that Sankar, Au­gus­tine, and Cole were grant­ed af­ter be­ing charged, last De­cem­ber, as their lawyers point­ed out that the hefty amounts were sub­se­quent­ly re­duced by a High Court Judge.

Au­gus­tine, a life­guard and swim coach, and Cole, a taxi dri­ver, were each placed on $1 mil­lion bail.

Sankar was grant­ed $1.3 mil­lion in bail as she is fac­ing a charge for an il­le­gal firearm, that was al­leged­ly found in a safe in the bed­room of the house, in ad­di­tion to charges of mar­i­jua­na and co­caine traf­fick­ing.

State pros­e­cu­tor Nigel Pil­grim did not op­pose bail for Au­gus­tine, Cole, and Sankar but strong­ly ob­ject­ed to Eligon be­ing giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to se­cure his re­lease.

Pil­grim asked Ho­sein to con­sid­er that Eligon was con­vict­ed of drug traf­fick­ing in 2011 and 2014 and his co-ac­cused had clean crim­i­nal records.

Eligon’s lawyer Criston J Williams did not chal­lenge Pil­grim’s claims but point­ed out that the State could not guar­an­tee that the tri­al of the case would start in less than five years. Ho­sein even­tu­al­ly up­held Pil­grim’s ob­jec­tion, re­mand­ed Eligon in­to cus­tody and ad­vised him that he had the right to ap­ply to a High Court Judge to vary her or­der.

The group was ar­rest­ed as of­fi­cers of the spe­cial op­er­a­tions re­sponse team (SORT) ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at a house in Re­gent Gar­dens, West­moor­ings, on De­cem­ber 4, last year.

The of­fi­cers, led by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, al­leged­ly found 315 pack­ets of mar­i­jua­na, a sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er amount of co­caine, scales, and oth­er drug traf­fick­ing ap­pa­ra­tus.

The drugs had an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $3.8 mil­lion ($3.4 mil­lion in mar­i­jua­na and $400,000 in co­caine).

Pho­tographs of the raid and the ac­cused were leaked on so­cial me­dia, short­ly af­ter it was com­plet­ed.

In April, last year, Sankar was kid­napped from a friend’s home in Diego Mar­tin. The 25-year-old was even­tu­al­ly re­leased af­ter a $167,000 ran­som was paid. At the time, Sankar was de­scribed as the step-daugh­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

Af­ter her ar­rest dur­ing the raid, Young sought to dis­tance him­self from her.

Sankar is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Lar­ry Williams, while John Heath is rep­re­sent­ing Au­gus­tine. Criston J Williams is al­so rep­re­sent­ing Cole.