The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has requested that further statements be taken before those implicated in last month’s marijuana find aboard the army’s flagship, could be properly charged and prosecuted.
The three ratings attached to the Coast Guard unit of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) were detained after one of them was caught trying to remove 133 pounds of ganja from the vessel. The ship, ‘GDFS Essequibo’, was at the time docked in a Barbados port, where it had sailed to participate, for the second time, in the naval arm of Exercise Tradewinds. It was immediately pulled from the exercise and sailed for home.
The incident has tarnished the image of the Coast Guard, but some sections feel that it also acted as a test of the moral fabric of the other members of the unit. Stabroek News understands that following the May 14 incident the morale of the other crewmembers was somewhat low given the damage to their image.
One source told Stabroek News on Monday, “what the incident showed was that the Coast Guard, as a unit, was not prepared to allow rogue elements in their membership to commit criminal acts with impunity. The fact that the army was prepared to expose the act and let it be dealt with within the due course of the law was good...it certainly augurs well for those who remain and it has instilled confidence in the populace that [the GDF] is of good intent...[The army] should be commended for [its] openness and determination to enforce the law, even if it is on their own members.”
Sources said the police are expected to take the additional statements today and that investigations include the further questioning of a senior rating who had sailed to Barbados on the vessel.
One legal source, touching on the aspect of jurisdiction, said the decision to recall the vessel was a good one, since a military vessel was considered the sovereign territory of its nation.
“The crime scene was limited to the ship also, and because the drug was not landed on Barbados territory, one can say that Guyana retained jurisdiction...The matter of jurisdiction was, however, complicated by the fact that the ship was in Barbados waters, so there could have been a legal argument in favour of either government prosecuting the case,” this newspaper was told.
Further, the source pointed out that the suspect was an AWOL Coast Guard Rating and, therefore, the GDF was within its rights to arrest and subject him to military discipline. As yet, it has not been determined whether the matter would be tried by court martial or in a civil court.