Man sentenced to 4 years for trafficking Jamaicans

Mar 11, 2023 Court Stories, Features / Columnists, News

Kaieteur News – Forty-six-year-old Tito Browne known as ‘Tommy’ and ‘Yankee’ was found guilty and sentenced to serve four years in prison for trafficking two Jamaican nationals.

Browne had reportedly offered to pay the Jamaican nationals to work for him on a farm but instead took away their passport and leaving them to work on a campsite for several months.

Jailed: Tito Browne

Browne made his first court appearance to answer to the Trafficking In Person charge back in May 2021. He had denied the charge which stated that between December 2020 and April 2021, he trafficked the two Jamaicans.

He was on trial at the Linden Magistrates’ Court before Magistrate Wanda Fortune. Magistrate Fortune had conducted an eight-month-long trial which began in December 2021 and concluded in August 2022. During the trial, Police Prosecutor Pindar-Whittaker, called the two victims as well as several police officers to testify.

On Thursday, Magistrate Fortune sentenced Browne to two terms of four years imprisonment for the trafficking of the two Jamaican nationals, however, those sentences will run concurrently. He was also sentenced to 0ne-year imprisonment on the count of withholding the passport of the two Jamaican nationals, fined $200,000 and ordered to pay $6,300,000 in restitution to the victims.

According to the State’s facts, in November 2020, one of the victims met an individual in Trelawney, Jamaica, who indicated to him that Browne had some farming work for him to do in Kara Kara Creek, Guyana and that he was willing to pay US$5000 for the work to be done.

It was stated that the first victim then informed the second victim about the opportunity, and together they arranged with Browne, who promised to facilitate all their travel expenses. They then left Jamaica on December 12, 2020.

The facts stated that when they arrived in Guyana, Browne instructed them to inform immigration that they would only be spending two weeks. Upon arriving at the campsite at Kara Kara Creek, Browne informed them that they would be spending six months at the campsite and confiscated their passports.

The victims recounted that from the date of entry to April 24, 2021, they worked at the Kara Kara camp but never received any compensation from Browne.

The victims added that Browne would visit periodically and demand that they work more diligently. He also continuously promised to pay them but never did. The duo stated that they could only contact their family on Browne’s phone when he visited. They recounted being unable to travel from the campsite and related that for the last three weeks, no one visited them, which caused their supplies to run low.

Eventually, the victims were forced to venture from the camp in search of other campsites, walking through bushes and swamplands until they managed to locate a logger who eventually took them to a village where they related their story and made a police report.

An investigation was launched, which eventually led to Browne’s arrest and prosecution.

According to the Guyana Police Force (GPF), Browne was arrested on April 28, 2021 and charged contrary to Section 3 (1)(a) and Section 4 of the Combating of Trafficking in Persons Act, this was after the Police had issued a wanted bulletin for him on April 27, 2021.

Only recently, the GPF secured a conviction against Feezal Shaw, a wildlife trader, who was sentenced to three years imprisonment on one count of human trafficking and ordered to pay $2,127,000 in restitution to the survivor.