Senior Reporter
derek.achong@guardian.co.tt
Two El Socorro fishermen have been acquitted of marijuana and cocaine trafficking.
Anand Ramlogan, 50, and 60-year-old Michael Boodoo, both of Chanka Trace, El Socorro, were found not guilty of the offences at the end of their trial before High Court Judge Gail Gonzales at the Hall of Justice in Port-of-Spain, yesterday afternoon. It took a nine-member jury almost 90 minutes to return with their unanimous verdicts.
The duo was accused of trafficking 510 kilos of marijuana and 28.7 kilos of cocaine. They were arrested three miles off the coast of Chacachacare on December 6, 2006.
Coast Guard officers alleged that they attempted to intercept the fishermen’s pirogue after they received a report from their radar centre that the vessel was coming from Venezuelan territorial waters.
The officers claimed the boat only came to a stop after they rammed it and it became partially submerged.
During their trial, the duo’s lawyers raised several inconsistencies with the evidence.
They pointed out that although the officers claimed Ramlogan admitted that he and Boodoo collected the drugs from a Venezuelan drug trafficker named Raul on Patos Island, they did not make notes of the purported utterance as legally required.
The fishermen’s lawyers also claimed that a seized boat, detained at the Coast Guard’s Staubles Bay headquarters, which was shown to the jury during the trial, was not Ramlogan’s boat, Shane 78.
They also noted that a Coast Guard officer was charged with possession of some of the drugs but was subsequently freed.
After the jury delivered their verdicts, Justice Gonzales ordered that the drugs be destroyed and Ramlogan’s boat returned.
Ramlogan was represented by Orin Kerr and Henry Chase, while Mario Merritt and Randall Raphael represented Boodoo.