Arthur Hall, Senior Staff Reporter

More and more Jamaican drug mules are heading to Trinidad as their first stop in the continuing effort to smuggle ganja into North America and Europe.

Local and international law-enforcement agencies are now looking at this new gateway which is attracting an increasing number of drug mules.

Last month, 72 drug swallowers were held by local police as they tried to leave the island.

More than 70 per cent of those drug mules were headed to the eastern Caribbean with the vast majority going to Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.

"Because law-enforcement agents in the United States and the United Kingdom are looking out for Jamaicans, what they do is try to get the drugs to Trinidad and from there other persons move it to North America and the UK," Detective Sergeant Jubert Llewellyn told The Sunday Gleaner.

"But we are aware of them and the fact that we have nabbed so many shows the effectiveness of the measures we have put in place to address that situation," Llewellyn added.

First hit

The link between Jamaican drug dealers and their Trinidadian counterparts first hit the national radar forcefully in June when four persons were held attempting to export 123 kilograms of ganja to Port-of-Spain.

They included Peter Hutton, a Trinidadian, who had travelled to Kingston and paid three Jamaicans to assist him to export the weed to his country.

The four were arrested at the Norman Manley International Airport with compressed ganja packed into water heaters.

At that time, the police reported that they suspected Hutton of exporting ganja to Trinidad on previous occasions.

Weeks later, the Trinidadian Coastguard and police personnel seized two crocus bags of ganja on a vessel transporting clinker from Jamaica to Trinidad.

With those developments, police from the two countries have been sharing information and, according to Llewellyn, the local police have the knowledge base of how the drug mules operate and who they are.

He said the police have determined that a large number of the new drug mules are from central Jamaica, with residents of Clarendon figuring prominently on the list.

"What we have picked up is that they come into Kingston and ingest the drugs and attempt to leave the island," said Llewellyn.

Close watch

The narcotics police are also keeping a close watch on persons returning to the island from Trinidad following a recent case where one man attempted to smuggle cocaine into the island.

On October 11, cocaine pellets were found in the stomach of Don Lawrence of a Port Royal address after he returned from Trinidad. Lawrence was subsequently arrested and charged.

That find occurred during a busy 48 hours for the narcotics police as they clamped down on would-be drug smugglers.

Hours before the arrest of Lawrence, the police detained two residents of St Ann who were allegedly seen attempting to attach two metal canisters to the hull of a ship off Gordon Cay, Port Bustamante. The canisters contained almost 100 kilograms of ganja.

Also on October 11, almost eight kilograms of cocaine was found in the suitcase of Lovel Godfrey, a 25-year-old of a Kingston address, as he attempted to check in for a flight to the United States.

More than 120 kilograms of compressed ganja was also seized by the police during a raid at Roundberry, St Elizabeth.

Howard Peart, 51, owner/operator of HP & Sons Auto Repairs, and 22-year-old Andrew Lewis, otherwise called 'Country', of Mountainside, St Elizabeth, were charged with possession and taking steps to export the drug.

While the police have long sought to clamp down on the guns-for-drugs trade between Jamaica and Haiti, the Trinidad connection is now proving to be an equally big worry.

Deadly risk