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Joined: Oct 1999
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Marty Offline OP
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$140 Million in cocaine up in smoke

As early as five this morning, the destruction of more than two tons of cocaine began in the north. An estimated one hundred and forty million dollars went up in smoke as the incinerator at the Tower Hill sugar mill destroyed the Colombian coke. The cargo was first brought to Belize City from the south last Thursday and then transferred up north where all day, the police and B.D.F. oversaw the operation. The cocaine, eighty bales and seventeen loose packs were found last Saturday. It was the cargo of a plane that was abandoned near the Bladen Reserve when it could not take off because of a clipped wing. News Five's Isani Cayetano reports.

Isani Cayetano, Reporting

From its seizure by members of the Belize Special Assignment Group on Saturday November thirteenth, to its ruin today this mass of Colombia's finest has arguably been the most guarded commodity in the country next to foreign currency at the Central Bank. Across the sprawling Tower Hill plant this morning members of Belize's elite tactical forces stood guard while work was being done systematically inside the factory's inferno to destroy eighty bales of cocaine. It was a painstaking task involving the random sampling and jotting down of information pertaining to each package incinerated.

Each bale is counted; a cake then selected and placed on a chopping block where an A.D.U. officer hacks it open with an axe before passing it on to another officer who then throws it into one of two blast furnaces nearby. Occasionally bagasse is added to the fire to contaminate the fumes coming out of the chute.

Isani Cayetano

Isani Cayetano

"The thick, acrid plume of smoke exhausting the chimneys here at BSI's Tower Hill facility is not that of the usual sugar crop. Instead what you are seeing is the end result of the destruction of eighty bales of cocaine."

It is a bit hard to imagine yet totally understandable why this product is heavily sought after on the global market. After all a brick of yayo on the streets of Belize City is the equivalent in value of this 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee. The entire haul, a combined total of one hundred and forty million dollars, is almost a fifth our national budget for this fiscal year. To further simplify its value it would be the same as building twelve Kendal Bridges.

To ensure that things run smoothly the process is overseen by an appointed group consisting of a Justice of the Peace, a magistrate, a chemist and a senior police officer. Since five-thirty, they have been on the go, accompanying the shipment from its storage at the Raccoon Street Police Station over the weekend to its target at Tower Hill. While the destruction ends a rigorous shift for these armed men it is only the beginning of a wider, more intense investigation into this aircraft that perched on the Southern Highway and those who offloaded its contents last Saturday. Its pilot has since skipped town but five officers attached to the Belize Police Department and a custom's boatman are currently in detention at the Hattieville Prison awaiting further legal action. Additional charges include a conspiracy charge as it is believed that they were part of an orchestra that landed the plane near the Bladen Reserve.

Corporals Renel Grant and Nelson Middleton, the former and current drivers assigned to the Governor General, and Vidal Cajun, as well as sergeants Lawrence Humes and Jacinto Roches and Customs Boatman Harold Usher were arrested near San Juan Village. The office of the D.P.P. will determine what other charges will be placed on the group.

Channel 5


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Its great they photographed it. Few people would believe it was really destroyed otherwise.


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They distressed something.

Joined: Oct 1999
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Marty Offline OP
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5 read additional charge for Southern Hwy drug plane

The 20 heavily armed police officers, BDF soldiers and two police mobile units that were used at the Magistrate's Court to ensure the safety of six people reportedly involved in the landing of a drug plane on the Southern Highway, were there apparently on another mission as well - to protect the accused officers from the cameras of reporters covering the story.

Five police officers and a boatman for the Customs Department who were suspected of facilitating the landing of the drug plane made an appearance before Chief Magistrate Margaret McKenzie.

Both in entering the courtroom and in exiting the court to where their police transport was, the accused officers were shielded from the media. In fact, police officers alerted the accused officers whenever they noticed a reporter trying to take their pictures, so that they could hide their faces.

The men were shackled with leg and wrist cuffs, and were swiftly moved into the courtroom, but no additional charges were added to their charge sheets in the morning.

The prosecutor at that point asked Chief Magistrate McKenzie for an adjournment date because there was currently no case file available for any further action, because the investigation is still ongoing.

Four of the five police officers detained and one customs officer had already been charged for possession of ammunition, while other charges were being prepared pending investigation.

The men are Corporal Renel Grant, 33, who is the Governor General's former driver, along with the GG's current driver, Corporal Nelson Middleton, 39; Sergeant Lawrence Humes, 38; Sergeant Jacinto Roches, 42, who is attached to the Internal Affairs Desk in Belmopan; and Harold Usher, 36, a boatman at Customs Department.

Another police officer of interest was Corporal Vidal Cahun, who has been charged for an unrelated firearm and ammunition charge.

Attorney Dickey Bradley told Amandala, this morning that he is currently representing all 6 men. He said that he was under the impression that his clients were all brought to court so that the additional charges related to drug trafficking offenses could be added to the list of charges they already face, but this was not the case, and he said that there had been no clear indication if any additional charges would be added.

But there would be further developments. All the six men went back to court this evening, but only five of them - Roches, Grant, Middleton, Humes, and Usher - were each read an additional charge, which was abetment to commit a crime, to wit, the importation of a controlled drug

The charges detailed that on November 13, 2010, the five men all assisted with the landing of an aircraft, loaded with 2,921.04 kilograms of cocaine, in the area between Mile 56 and 57 on the Southern Highway.

Bradley was not present at court when the men were brought back in the afternoon, and as a result, the men asked Chief Magistrate McKenzie for a little time to contact him. Unfortunately, he remained unavailable when the men were finally read their charges.

No plea was taken from the men and no bail was granted. They have all been remanded until February 9, 2011.

As we reported in a previous issue of the Amandala, they were intercepted in a van near the San Juan bus stop - that is, 21 miles from where the plane landed. The estimated value of the cocaine associated with this plane was $131 million Belize dollars.

A court order was given for the destruction of the entire bust, which was conducted at a BSI facility in the Orange Walk District on November 22, 2010.

Amandala

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Marty Offline OP
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Six officers charged in biggest drug bust offered bail

Lawrence Humes

Six officers, including a Customs boatman, who were charged in connection with the landing of a drug plane on the Southern Highway on November thirteenth, were offered bail today. They were charged on Thursday with Abetment of a Crime for the Importation of a Controlled Drug by facilitating the landing of an aircraft with two thousand nine hundred and twenty-one kilos of suspected cocaine. But the bail granted today is for the initial charges of Possession of Unlicensed firearm and Ammunition.

Jacinto Roches

The charge which was brought against officers Lawrence Humes, Jacinto Roches, Vidal Cajun, Renel Grant, Nelson Middleton and Harold Usher came after the discovery of a single bullet inside an unmarked white van they were traveling in. The men were intercepted on the Southern Highway near its junction with the San Juan Road.

Vidal Cajun

Along with the single round police also found a number of items including battle dress, wet suits, GPS trackers and car batteries, leading them to believe that they orchestrated the landing and unloading of the King Air Beech Craft plane.

Renel Grant

Attorney for the men appeared at the Magistrate's Court this afternoon on their behalf and four of them were offered bail in the sum of eight thousand dollars each for possession of the unlicensed ammunition.

Nelson Middleton

Freedom however, remains a distant dream for Humes, Roches, Grant and Middleton as the additional charge levied upon them was for an indictable offense. But Cajun, who was not charged with the importation of a controlled drug, was able to meet bail by midday.

harold usher

Meanwhile the group's attorney Dickie Bradley is set to file a bail application for the remaining four cops.

Channel 5


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Marty Offline OP
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Drug plane that landed on Highway was stolen from Honduran Military

The biggest drug bust in Belize was recorded in November last year when a twin-engine Beechcraft Super King Air 200 plane landed on the Southern highway laden with Colombian cocaine; all of two point six tons of the white stuff with a value of a whopping one hundred and forty million Belize dollars. The plane could not take off because its wings were clipped as it flew over the Bladen Reserve. Five police officers and a Customs boatman were linked to the drug plane but their case is still before the courts. At the time, our investigations led to a similar stolen plane from the Honduras army. We bring back this report because it has bearing five months after the bust. A report called "Drug gangs muscle into new territory: Central America" published over the Easter weekend says the stolen Honduran plane was in fact the aircraft that transported the drugs to Belize. According to the report, the Beechcraft was stolen at the Armando Escalon airbase in San Pedro Sula on the night of November seventh. The plane headed toward Venezuela and was used in narco-trafficking activities. The report speaks to the drug trade in the region and how drug cartels have infiltrated governments, the police and militaries. It says Honduras has become a staging ground for narco-traffickers who are also operating with relative ease in Guatemala and San Salvador. The last we heard of the plane is that it is in custody of the BDF. The full text of the article can seen at channel5belize.com.

Channel 5


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Marty Offline OP
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Southern Highway drug plane presents more mysteries

Author: Adele Ramos

A report carried widely in the US media over the past weekend titled, “Drug gangs muscle into new territory: Central America”, indicates that the drug plane that landed here in Belize last November, in the record drug bust of cocaine valued at roughly $130 million, was the very same confiscated drug plane that had been stolen from the Honduran military days earlier, but taken to Venezuela before being brought into Belize with Columbian cocaine.

Police Minister Douglas Singh told Amandala Wednesday, April 27, that Belize police had checked with their Honduran counterparts, but they were not able to corroborate the registration number of the plane.

Last November, Belize police had reported the registration number of the twin-engine plane as N786B. Amandala’s search today for that registration number led us to a much smaller 4-seater plane with a single engine, certainly unable to be used in the large drug operation that occurred last November.

The official information from Belize police indicated that the plane that was found on the Southern Highway is a black, red and white Beechcraft Super King Air 200. The one to which the registration number N786B is assigned is a Beech A35 model.

The plane confiscated in Belize is the exact same model of the plane reported missing from Honduras, but which had provisional Mexican registration numbers: XB-K556/XB-KSC. However, the paint design is different.

Since Singh told us that there was no confirmation that the drug plane, still parked in Belize, was the confiscated drug plane stolen from the Honduran military last November, we contacted the Honduran Embassy in Belize, to see if they could provide more clarity.

A spokesperson from the Embassy told us that they were also informed that the particulars of the planes did not match—but that another query has been made with Honduran authorities following our newspaper’s request for information.

Amandala lastly contacted the author of the story carried in the US media, Tim Johnson, who is Mexico Bureau Chief for McClatchy Newspapers, which includes Miami Herald, Kansas City Star and The Tribune newspapers in the USA. Johnson told us that he had obtained the information from his security sources. He pointed us to information posted on a French website (http://morice.7duquebec.com/?p=842), which indicates that the registration number of the plane found in Belize appeared to be hastily posted on it.

This information is interesting in light of recent incidents reported in Belize media that unauthorized changes in plane registration numbers were attempted openly at the Philip Goldson International Airport.

Furthermore, our newspaper was made to understand that the Hondurans are exploring a possible Belize connection with a major bust in San Pedro Sula on the 17th of last month, in which they uncovered a jungle processing facility, an arsenal of weapons, and cocaine paste.

The McClatchy news report said, “Drug cartels now control large parts of the countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America. They’ve bought off politicians and police, moved cocaine processing laboratories up from the Andes, and are obtaining rockets and other heavy armament that make them more than a match for Central America’s weak militaries.

It also cites burgeoning political influence in the drug trade.

Belize Police Minister Singh told us that his team is hoping to strengthen collaboration with officials in Honduras, and they have a meeting slated for June to discuss the problem of crime.

Singh also informed Amandala that the Belize Defence Force (BDF) has made an argument for the use of the confiscated Beechcraft.

Amandala understands that another drug plane nabbed in a similar landing on the Northern Highway in 2008 and sold via auction has been repaired and is parked at the Philip Goldson International Airport.

Amandala


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Yes, the plane is still there and called July Morning.


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The should try it with the engine numbers, that's like a VIN number on a car and the manufacturer has it in his database.

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Marty Offline OP
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What do Honduras' missing plane and highway drug plane have in common?

A report in the Honduran press says that the Crime Investigation Unit of Honduras is investigating the twin engine plane used in the biggest drug bust in Belize. The Beach craft is in the custody of the Belize Defence Force but, as we reported at the time of the raid, it is eerily similar to a plane stolen from the Honduran military just before the bust on the southern highway last November fourteenth. According to the report, the Honduran government will be asking the cooperation of the Belize government to return the plane if it is verified as the stolen plane from Honduran military.

Channel 5


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