A 22-year-old fish­er­man from To­co, Trinidad was on Wednes­day fined EC$21,000 (EC$1 = US$0.37) for co­caine pos­ses­sion and am­mu­ni­tion of­fences in St. Vin­cent. 

Chief Mag­is­trate Rechanne Browne im­posed prison terms as al­ter­na­tives if Dion Har­ry did not pay the fines. 

She fur­ther or­dered that he, as well as the three men who were orig­i­nal­ly joint­ly charged with him, be de­port­ed. 

On Tues­day, Har­ry, Joel Med­i­na, An­dre Lee, and Ker­ry Keller were tak­en be­fore the court charged that on Oc­to­ber 14, at Canouan, they had in their pos­ses­sion 330 grammes of co­caine with in­tent to sup­ply it to an­oth­er, had it for the pur­pose of drug traf­fick­ing, and at­tempt­ed to im­port the drug in­to the coun­try. 

The men were fur­ther charged with pos­ses­sion of 20 rounds of 5.56 mm am­mu­ni­tion and 49 rounds of 7.62 mm am­mu­ni­tion with­out a li­cence. 

Har­ry plead­ed guilty to the charges while his co-ac­cused plead­ed not guilty. 

When they re­turned to court on Wednes­day, the oth­er men main­tained their re­spec­tive pleas and pros­e­cu­tor Sta­tion Sergeant Ren­rick Cato with­drew the charges against them. 

The court grant­ed the pros­e­cu­tion’s ap­pli­ca­tion for a re­moval or­der for the trio. 

The facts, as pre­sent­ed by Cato, are that on Oc­to­ber 14, act­ing on in­for­ma­tion, the Coast Guard in­ter­cept­ed a white, blue and green pirogue, west of Canouan. The ves­sel had four oc­cu­pants, in­clud­ing Har­ry. 

Noth­ing was found on any of the men, but when the ves­sel was searched at the Coast Guard base, of­fi­cers found a black plas­tic bag among some brown sug­ar and in that bag were 16 pack­ages of a light brown, fudge-like sub­stance re­sem­bling co­caine and a pack­age with sev­er­al rounds of am­mu­ni­tion. Charges were sub­se­quent­ly laid. 

In mit­i­ga­tion, Har­ry’s lawyer Du­ane Daniel point­ed out that no weapons were found on the boat, his young client had no pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions and had co­op­er­at­ed with the po­lice and en­tered a guilty plea. 

Re­gard­ing the charge of pos­ses­sion of the co­caine with in­tent to sup­ply, he said his in­struc­tions were that the men were off the coast of Grena­da, and St. Vin­cent was not even their des­ti­na­tion. 

“But the Coast Guard, in the ex­er­cise of their du­ty, saw the ves­sel and board­ed it and took them to an SVG port,” Daniel said, adding that his client was throw­ing him­self at the mer­cy of the court. 

He said Har­ry had three of the strongest mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors in his favour – his youth, a guilty plea and no pre­vi­ous con­vic­tion. 

“I can on­ly ask that a fine be im­posed cou­pled with an or­der for de­por­ta­tion,” the de­fence at­tor­ney said, adding that the co­caine is es­ti­mat­ed to have a street val­ue of EC$5,000. 

The chief mag­is­trate not­ed that the court could im­pose a fine of up to three times the val­ue of the drugs. 

For the co­caine pos­ses­sion of­fence, the chief mag­is­trate fined Har­ry EC$6,000 or six months in prison, and EC$3,500 on each of the im­por­ta­tion and traf­fick­ing of­fences or an al­ter­na­tive of three months in prison for each of­fence. 

Re­gard­ing the 49 rounds of 7.62 mm am­mu­ni­tion, af­ter the one-third dis­count for the guilty plea was cal­cu­lat­ed, the fine was EC$6,534 or eight months in prison. 

For the 20 rounds of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion, the chief mag­is­trate im­posed a fine of EC$2,000, af­ter the one-third dis­count, or six months be­hind bars. 

She or­dered that the co­caine be de­stroyed, the am­mu­ni­tion con­fis­cat­ed and Har­ry be re­moved from the coun­try af­ter com­ply­ing with the or­der of the court. 

“Feel free to come back to St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines any­time, just do it prop­er­ly,” Mag­is­trate Browne said. 

“We love to have peo­ple here but do it cor­rect­ly, just as the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go would like us to come cor­rect­ly.” 

KINGSTOWN, St Vin­cent, CMC