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Guyanese faces Canadian trial for backtrack ring
Savita Singh-Murray
ST. STEPHEN –Canada (Telegraph Journal) – Savita Singh-Murray offered to pay $2,500 apiece to smuggle illegal aliens into the United States, a witness testified in St. Stephen provincial court Monday.
The 43-year-old Charlotte County woman, a native of Guyana, did not know that the “truck drivers” she talked to in Fredericton on June 18, 2008 were undercover RCMP officers, retired staff sergeant Arthur Gary Doyle testified.
Nor did she realise that her supposed friend, Lloyd Laking from McAdam, who set up the meeting at Tim Hortons on Prospect Street, was a paid RCMP “agent,” Doyle said.
“He’s sort of like an informant,” Judge William McCarroll said during testimony by Const. Mike Burke, the first witness in the trial on charges against four people.
Doyle wore a recording device at the June 18 meeting, he testified.
On May 14, the RCMP’s Atlantic Region Immigration and Passport Section charged Singh-Murray from outside St. Stephen, Joseph Vaughn McCluskey, 71, of Fredericton, and Mohamed Habin Yusef, 53, and Ravindra Hariprasad, 36, both of Scarborough, Ont., with conspiring together with others to encourage or induce an alien to enter the United States contrary to American law between May 5, 2007 and May 11, 2009.
The Criminal Code makes it illegal to use Canada as a base to break the laws of another country.
The trial is scheduled to run all this week. On Friday, McCarroll will likely set dates for it to continue.
Singh-Murray stated that she had a $10,000 contract to smuggle a young woman from Guyana into the United States, Doyle said. Singh-Murray said the woman stayed at McCluskey’s apartment, Doyle testified.
Singh-Murray, who served a 132-day jail sentence in Maine in 2005 for smuggling people into the United States, said she could not cross the border, Doyle testified.
The “truck drivers” demanded more than one person to make the smuggling run worth the risk, Doyle said. She said she could get at least three, possibly six, he testified.
Singh-Murray’s brother-in-law would act for her in Ontario where the trucks would cross the border, Doyle said. Singh-Murray would get someone to pick up her clients once the truck crossed the line, the retired RCMP officer said.
RCMP Cpl. Doug Roach testified to his role in preparing applications for wiretaps, search warrants and other documents. Burke identified documents and items seized in New Brunswick and Ontario. Federal Crown prosecutor Monica McQueen from Halifax introduced 35 Crown exhibits into evidence.
Later in the trial the court will hold voir dire hearings during which the judge will rule on whether to admit five other items marked for identification as Crown exhibits, McQueen said.
These include DVD interviews of two people now in South America, who are not available to testify. The judge must also decide whether McCluskey and Hariprasad made statements voluntarily.
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