Wanted Guyanese refused bail in TT
By FRANCIS JOSEPH
Newsday
Guyana Chronicle
March 13, 2007
PORT OF SPAIN -- Guyanese businessman Peter Morgan, who is wanted in the United States on three drug charges, was refused bail when he appeared before Chief Magistrate Sherman Mc Nicolls yesterday to answer a request for his extradition.
Peter Morgan was held at Piarco International Airport on Friday while in transit to Guyana from Panama.
In a dramatic swoop, Trinidad and Tobago authorities assisted by U.S. agents, seized Morgan at Piarco just days after an indictment was unsealed in a New York court charging him with three counts of drug conspiracy.
Morgan, an auto sales businessman and car racer, was represented yesterday by a battery of lawyers - Rajiv Persad, Randy Depoo, Jagdeo Singh, and Ravi Rajcoomar.
Persad applied for bail for Morgan, but attorney David West, representing the U.S. Government, resisted the application. After hearing submissions on both sides, Mc Nicolls refused the application and ordered that Morgan be kept in jail until the hearing and determination of the extradition proceedings. The case was adjourned to March 19.
Morgan had been under surveillance by U.S. authorities for a number of years after several run-ins with law enforcement and his name had been on a list of Guyanese that the U.S. is aiming to place before American courts on drug charges.
Morgan was indicted last November on three counts of conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine in the U.S. The indictments were unsealed last Wednesday and an arrest warrant was issued the same day for the Guyanese.
His capture in Trinidad on Friday was reminiscent of that of other Guyanese businessman Roger Khan who is currently before a New York court on similar charges. Khan was also arrested in Trinidad after being deported from Suriname.
Morgan and some associates were returning to Guyana from Panama and were in transit in Trinidad when two Trinidad police officers and two agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) arrested him around 1 pm at the Piarco Airport.
Morgan was arrested on a provisional arrest warrant by the officials on an indictment of conspiracy to traffic cocaine into the U.S. between 2001 and 2003.
Khan, who is before a U.S. court charged with conspiracy to import cocaine into the U.S., was arrested in Suriname last year June in a huge drug bust. The charges were later dropped and he was deported from Suriname to Guyana via Trinidad and Tobago. It was here that DEA officials seized him.
Morgan has denied the allegations by the U.S. and is maintaining his innocence. He was in Panama with colleagues on business arrangements.
According to the first count of the New York grand jury indictment, in or about and between 2001 and August 2003, within the Eastern District of New York and elsewhere, Morgan together with others did knowingly and intentionally conspire to import a controlled substance into the U.S. from a place outside thereof, which offence involved five kilogrammes or more of a substance containing cocaine.
In the second indictment, the U.S. said that Morgan during the same dates together with others did knowingly and intentionally conspire to distribute and possess with intent to distribute cocaine into the U.S.
The third count alleged that the Guyanese together with others intentionally conspired to distribute cocaine intending and knowing that such substance would be imported into the U.S. All three indictments are in violation of Title 21 United States Code Section 963 and 960.