DEA arrest Peter Morgan in Trinidad on arrest warrant …cite December 2006 indictment in US
Kaieteur News
March 10, 2007
Guyanese Peter Morgan was arrested by the Trinidad and Tobago police, yesterday, on a provisional arrest warrant issued by the United States Department of Justice. Morgan was returning to Guyana from Panama on a Caribbean Airlines flight earlier in the day. He was in transit at Piarco, according to a source.
At the time, Morgan was with another Guyanese. They were preparing to leave the twin-island republic when two DEA agents and two law enforcement officers from Trinidad and Tobago detained them.
After perusing the documents, the officials allowed the other Guyanese to leave but detained Morgan.
According to reports from Trinidad, by yesterday afternoon he was in the custody of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) pending extradition to the US.
He became the third Guyanese to be so arrested, following Raffel Christopher Douglas and Shaheed Roger Khan.
The provisional arrest warrant stemmed from a United States grand jury indictment signed on December 11, last year, in the United States District Court in the Eastern District of New York.
The indictment stemmed from three counts of exporting cocaine to the United States. The first count states that Peter Morgan “together with others did knowingly and intentionally conspire to import a controlled substance into the United States from a place outside” between December 2001 and August 2003.
The indictment states that the volume of cocaine was “five kilograms or more”. The other two counts state that Morgan conspired with others to distribute cocaine between December 2001 and August 2003.
His arrest in Trinidad was made possible through a treaty signed between the then United States Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, and Trinidad and Tobago's Prime Minister, Basdeo Panday, on March 4, 1996.
Christopher and Panday signed two treaties and one agreement on March 4 at a ceremony at the Prime Minister's office.
“These treaties are expected to greatly facilitate cooperation on law enforcement between our two countries,” Christopher said at the signing.
The treaty replaced the extradition treaty that existed between the United States and United Kingdom and dating from December 22, 1931. This treaty was made applicable to Trinidad and Tobago upon its independence.
According to Panday, the new treaty “will enhance both countries' capabilities to bring criminals to justice, especially those involved in drug related crimes.”
That treaty has since been described as the most draconian in the region. Trinidad amended its laws and today all that is needed, according to the law, is a copy of the arrest warrant signed by a judge.
It negates the need for a court hearing in the country to determine whether there are enough grounds for an extradition as is the case in the other countries.
“The agreement provides for ship boarding in international waters. It also contains Trinidad and Tobago's consent for U.S. aircraft engaged in law enforcement operations to overfly its territory and order aircraft suspected of drug-trafficking to land.”