No arrests yet
Stabroek News
June 13, 2002
Two weeks and five days after members of the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) unearthed some 392 packages of cannabis behind a false wall in a container at the John Fernandes Wharf no one has been arrested and charged for the illicit drug find.
However, a CANU source yesterday told this newspaper that the investigation "is a very complex one" and sleuths would need to take their time in gathering evidence.
On May 23 CANU officers had swooped on a 40-ft container at the wharf and had discovered 1,871 kilogrammes (around 4,116 pounds) of the drug in compressed form. The street value was pegged at around $60 million.
The blue container was empty except for the drugs and was scheduled to leave the country the same day for Miami on MV Heinrichs.
The container had arrived in Guyana on May 1 from Jamaica and there was some speculation as to whether the marijuana was loaded here or had come from Jamaica for transshipping. Yesterday the CANU source said investigators have not ruled out this possibility and added that they have questioned a number of persons.
The source said that the container left Jamaica and also made stops in Trinidad and Suriname and there was a possibility of persons in those countries being questioned. "We have not reached that stage as yet, but the possibility exists," the source said.