LEFT: Shaheed Roger Khan ...deal with authorities
RIGHT: ROBERT SIMELS..faces life in prison

Any film producer would want this story. A wanted fugitive being flown from Suriname to Guyana, but the plane mysteriously lands at Piarco International Airport. He is kept for hours at Piarco and then DEA agents put him on a plane and takes him to the United States where he is wanted on 18 drug charges. He then hires a bigshot, high-priced Manhattan lawyer to represent him. But that lawyer decides to tamper with witnesses in the trial. The bubble burst when the lawyer was wiretapped and all hell broke loose. This week, both men were found guilty and faces between 15 years to life in prison.

Shaheed Roger Khan was taken from Suriname and brought to Trinidad. While detained at Piarco International Airport, Khan was taken by DEA officers and flown to New York where he was wanted, despite efforts from his Trinidadian attorneys. In New York, he hired Manhattan attorney, Robert Simels, as his defence counsel. Simels was assisted locally by attorney Odai Ramischand. But very soon, Simels found himself in hot water, charged with plotting to kill, and tampering with eight witnesses in Khan’s case. On Thursday, Simels, 62, was found guilty in the Brooklyn Federal Court, the same courthouse where Trinidadian Kareem Ibrahim and three Guyanese are awaiting trial on charges of plotting to blow up JFK International Airport, New York, in 2007.

Simels and his associate, Arienne Irving, were found guilty on two counts of witness tampering, and possessing illegal eavesdropping equipment. In one taped conversation with Selwyn Vaughn, a former Khan employee turned federal witness, Simels was heard suggesting a witness might suddenly get amnesia if paid enough money. “That’s a terrible thing, but if it happens, it happens,” Simels added. Later in the same meeting, the lawyer stated, “Obviously, any witness you can eliminate is a good thing.” In another discussion about locating relatives of a witness, Simels was recorded telling the cooperator that Khan had instructed, “Don’t kill the mother.”

Khan had initially pleaded not guilty to 18 counts of drug possession and drug distribution charges, which alleged that he imported, conspired to import and distribute, and possessed cocaine for the purpose of distribution on a number of dates between 2001 and 2006. He was also charged for being part of an international distribution network. In 1993, Khan was charged with possession of an illegal firearm and ammunition and was granted bail, but fled the US jurisdiction. As the case unfolded, there were some startling revelations. Court documents surfaced, fingering Khan in almost 200 murders in Guyana. Khan has been fingered as having ordered the execution of Donald Allison, a boxing coach of Agricola; and Devendra Persaud, a businessman who had been fingered in the killing of a local pilot from Ogle. Allison was named in a court document as being the gun-runner for the local infamous ‘Fine Man’ gang, while Persaud was suspected of cooperating with the US Government against Khan and other local drug couriers.

The case against Khan

Special Agent Cassandra Jackson of the DEA, said it all. In her affidavit to support the charges against Khan, she told the court “Khan was ultimately able to control the cocaine industry in Guyana, in large part, because he was backed by a paramilitary squad that would murder, threaten and intimidate others at Khan’s directive. Khan’s enforcers committed violent acts and murders on Khan’s orders that were directly in furtherance of Khan’s drug trafficking conspiracy.” According to Jackson, the US Government’s case was to establish that Khan was the leader of a violent drug trafficking organisation and that he and his co-conspirators obtained large quantities of cocaine and then imported the cocaine into the Eastern District of New York and other places for further distribution.

It was while he was managing his drug-smuggling business in neighbouring Suriname that he was caught. At home in Guyana, Khan seemed to enjoy a charmed existence of immunity from arrest and prosecution. He had many friends and associates in Trinidad who helped his booming trade. His mistake, however, was to enter Suriname. There, his cocaine-constructed house of cards collapsed with his dramatic arrest in Paramaribo. Khan was flown out of Johann Pengel International Airport, Paramaribo, on a Suriname Airways flight to Trinidad. He was then handed over to immigration authorities upon arrival who then handed him over to US officials. Less than 24 hours after being expelled from Suriname, Khan was arraigned at the Brooklyn Federal Court in New York on June 30, 2006, on a charge of conspiring to import cocaine and was ordered to be detained at the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn.

Khan’s arrest showed the stark contrast in the quality of governance between the two states. Suriname’s Chandrikapersad Santokhi deemed Shaheed Khan a threat to the national security of Guyana and Suriname and other countries, and linked him to plots to assassinate government and judicial officials in that country. According to Santokhi, international agencies, including those in the USA, had been looking for him. On the other hand, Guyana’s Minister of Home Affairs at the time, Gail Texeira, formally indicated to Suriname that the government had no interest in seeking Khan’s return at that time. Khan’s criminal enterprise was financed with dirty money earned from drug smuggling. The US government charged that a significant amount of the cocaine dispatched by Khan went to the Eastern District of New York for further distribution. As an example, it cited a Guyanese drug trafficking organisation, the Queens Cartel, based in Queens, New York, which it said was supplied by Khan and was said to have distributed hundreds of kilogrammes of cocaine.