The Commission of Enquiry visited Tivoli Gardens on Friday as part of its probe into the operation of May 2010 to apprehend then don Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke. The announcement was made on Tuesday by Commission Chairman Sir David Simmons.
The bus departed the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston at 9:30 am for Tivoli Gardens. The tour ran for roughly 3 hrs.
The tour route included most of the sites mentioned during the enquiry.
Tivoli Gardens is a garrison community located in West Kingston and is the birthplace and former ruling grounds of the Jamaican drug lord.
Per reports, Buruji Kashamu, an alleged drug smuggler was elected senator in Nigeria.
According to the Associated Press, a man indicted in America for allegedly smuggling heroin, in a court case that was the basis for the TV hit Orange Is The New Black, has been elected a senator in Nigeria.
Buruji Kashamu was little known before he returned home in 2003 from Britain despite a US extradition order to become a major financier of President Goodluck Jonathan’s party.
Election results identify Kashamu as a senator-elect in south-west Ogun state. Opponents are challenging his victory in court, saying ballots were rigged.
Kashamu, 56, hung up the phone twice when the Associated Press called for comment about the drug case. Kashamu has said he is “a clean businessman” and that the 1998 indictment by a grand jury in the Northern District of Illinois for conspiracy to import and distribute heroin in the United States is a case of mistaken identity. He has said Chicago prosecutors really want the dead brother he closely resembles.
A British court refused a US extradition request in 2003 over uncertainty about Kashamu’s identity. Chicago Judge Richard Posner thought otherwise when he refused a motion to dismiss Kashamu’s case last year.
A dozen people were long ago tried and jailed in the case, including American Piper Kerman, whose memoir about her jail time became the Netflix hit Orange Is The New Black. Kerman’s book never identified Kashamu by name, but there is a west African drug kingpin whom she calls “Alhaji”, meaning one who has completed the haj or pilgrimage to Mecca.
A Nigerian federal court last year ordered Kashamu’s extradition, an order upheld by an appeals court. But Nigeria’s government has not extradited him.
That failure caused Olusegun Obasanjo, a former president, to warn that “drug barons … will buy candidates, parties and eventually buy power or be in power themselves”.
Jonathan’s perceived protection of Kashamu was a factor that led Obasanjo to defect from the ruling party before recent elections to the opposition that won most votes in Ogun, the home state of Kashamu and Obasanjo.
Kashamu is suing Obasanjo for libel for stating that Kashamu is a fugitive from US justice. He had won a court order halting publication of Obasanjo’s autobiography but a judge this week rescinded it, saying Kashamu had misled the court. Obasanjo’s lawyer argued that the truth cannot be libel.
President-elect Muhammadu Buhari, a former military dictator who had people jailed for littering in the 1980s, has promised to fight corruption. That has many politicians fearful in a country where corruption is endemic.
The former Commissioner of Police testified that the crime that took place in other communities across Jamaica also occurred in the Tivoli Gardens community.
Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington yesterday gave the Tivoli Gardens Commission of Enquiry further insight into the power of the Presidential Click led by Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke.
Ellington — who was responding to questions from attorney Alexander Williams, who is representing several Tivoli Gardens residents — said that the police never gave up on reaching out to the residents of the West Kingston community.
He said that an attempt was made to start a youth club there in the early 2000s, but the plan was resisted by the Presidential Click.
Ellington said that the club was eventually formed, but with the compromise that it be named after the criminal gang.
He said that after the 2010 operation to apprehend Coke, who was wanted in the United States on drugs and gunrunning charges, the club was relaunched and renamed the Tivoli Gardens Police Youth Club.
The former top cop said the police were then able to run the club as they do the other police youth clubs across the island.
During the afternoon session, Ellington — in a testy exchange with Independent Commission of Investigation (INDECOM) boss Terrence Williams — said that he wasn’t pleased with the compromise that was made.
He said the name Presidential Click was associated with a criminal organization and to brand the group like that would be like supporting the gang.
Earlier, during the morning session, the former top cop testified that the crime that took place in other communities across Jamaica also occurred in Tivoli Gardens.
He said, however, that the police were prevented by criminals from accessing the community to investigate these crimes, which included murders. He added that criminals there enforced a code of silence that made it impossible for crimes committed in the community to be investigated.
The Commission of Enquiry visited Tivoli Gardens on Friday as part of its probe into the operation of May 2010 to apprehend then don Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke. The announcement was made on Tuesday by Commission Chairman Sir David Simmons.
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