The wheels of Justice grind slowly but exceedingly fine

Sep 04, 2014 Editorial

The Suriname government’s claim that the arrest of Dino Bouterse was politically motivated has been turned on its head with his confession to facilitating movements of a terrorist; conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the US; and his guilty to firearms trafficking charges. As one senior police official in neighbouring Trinidad and Tobago said, the Americans know how to conduct an investigation which nets from captain to cook. These people are famous for their patience in setting up sting operations which sometimes last for years.
Bouterse’s revelations come days after the release of Hugo Carvajal, a retired Venezuelan general by officials of the Netherlands-administered island of Aruba after the Dutch government who recognized his diplomatic immunity. Carvajal who ran his country’s military intelligence from 2004 to 2008 is wanted in the US for his involvement in protecting the illegal drug trade from interdiction by anti-narcotics authorities. Ironically the former army officer has accused the Aruban judge and prosecutor of corruption for their handling of his case.
The similarity between the Carvajal and Bouterse issues is that they were both intimately involved in their respective country’s efforts to apprehend wrongdoers of the very things of which they are accused. Interestingly perhaps is that those two are not the first nor will they be the last to use their positions to line their pockets. What should be of concern to all those persons similarly inclined, and who might be operating among us, is that the wheels of the US Justice Department grind slowly but exceedingly fine, and none is spared.
But that is only one side of the coin because some have argued that the war on drugs is selective, and the energy expended on the producing and transit countries is disproportionate to their size and native resources compared to anything waged in the end user countries. Allegations are rife about official complicity in the drug business so much so that it is a widely held belief that it is not in the major agencies interest to eliminate the drug scourge, but rather pulls out all the stops to manage and control it. The rationale is that the war on drugs provides their raison d’être which – if removed, diminishes their utility value. Among the more credible and prominent sources associated with this view is former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chief Robert Bonner who in an interview with CBS accused the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of unlawfully importing a ton of cocaine into the US in collaboration with (of all people) the Venezuelan government during 1990.
In alluding to the crucial role external forces have played in the spread of drugs in foreign nations President Vladimir Putin is reported as saying that Russia and Europe had been victims of “narco aggression” and called his country’s drug abuse problem a national calamity. Also in what must rank as the supreme irony, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke made the startling (for some) allegation that government officials are protecting the drug trade and profiting from it. He went so far as to describe the counter-narcotics programme in Afghanistan as the single most ineffective programme in the history of American foreign policy.
Denial has also played a significant part in fostering the illegal drug trade and Guyana at least up to the mid to late 2000s was not unique in that regard. The rise of Roger Khan and the incapacitation to the point of emasculation of law enforcement bodies are testimony to the consequences of turning a blind eye to what was obvious to everyone else. The late President Saparmurat Niyazov once claimed that Turkmenistan which had reported no major drug seizures since 2000, had no drug problem. Yet in 2002 his country’s Prosecutor-General was arrested for operating a drug-trafficking ring.
What ought to wake up the people who operate on the wrong side of the law is the prospect of being forced to limit their travel options to places that have no extradition treaty with the U.S. The requirement that passenger manifests should be forwarded to destination countries will assist in that area. However, Guyanese being who they are, will always find ways to circumvent this demand up and including possession of genuine passports with bogus names.

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The wheels of Justice grind slowly but exceedingly fine

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