Gail Alexan­der

A Guyanese man who claims he was “un­wit­ting­ly turned in­to a drug mule” when his suit­case was al­leged­ly tam­pered with dur­ing a Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) flight to the US, has sued CAL for al­leged neg­li­gence.

The sto­ry was car­ried in the Oc­to­ber 10 edi­tion of the New York Post.

It in­volved an Oc­to­ber 2018 in­ci­dent con­cern­ing Guyanese-born Sime­on Wil­son who lives in Queens, New York.

CAL Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Dionne Ligoure told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, “The mat­ter is be­fore the court.”

As a re­sult she couldn’t pro­vide fur­ther in­for­ma­tion.

The Post re­port­ed facts from Wil­son’s law­suit.

It was claimed that Wil­son, a jan­i­tor, had gone to spend a va­ca­tion in his home­land cel­e­brat­ing his el­der­ly fa­ther’s birth­day and on re­turn­ing home to the US had col­lect­ed his bag from the lug­gage carousel at JFK air­port, New York.

It has re­port­ed that Wil­son at the time didn’t no­tice that some­one had fas­tened a neck­tie around the han­dle of his bag but it’s al­leged there was no neck­tie on the han­dle when Wil­son had checked in with CAL at Guyana’s Ched­di Ja­gan air­port for the trip back to the US.

The Post re­port­ed that when he re­turned to the US, he was pulled aside by US Cus­toms and ar­rest­ed when 2,000 grams of co­caine was found in two bags, Wil­son’s law­suit claimed he had “nev­er touched, han­dled or sold or seen drugs in his life and didn’t put them in his suit­case.”

The re­port stat­ed that 10 weeks lat­er the pros­e­cu­tors dropped the charges af­ter de­ter­min­ing Wil­son’s bag had been tam­pered with “while in the sole cus­tody of CAL”, he claimed in his court doc­u­ments.

Wil­son said his fam­i­ly had to bail him out of jail, his rep­u­ta­tion in Guyana was ru­ined and he lost his job in the US.