KINGSTON, Jamaica (CBS/AP) After weeks of being hunted by Jamaican security forces Christopher “Dudus” Coke was captured at a highway checkpoint after a popular preacher convinced the reputed drug lord to turn himself in.
Coke has reportedly been on the run since the U.S. issued a warrant for his arrest May 18 in connection with drug trafficking and gunrunning charges.
The ensuing hunt for him by Jamaican officials, including a major offensive on a Kingston slum where they believed Coke was hiding, claimed 76 lives. It also prompted Jamaican officials to declare a state of emergency.
According to the Rev. Al Miller, an influential evangelical preacher who facilitated the surrender of Coke’s brother earlier this month, Coke consulted with him about his desire to surrender.
“I therefore made arrangements with his lawyers because he wanted to go ahead with the extradition process,” Miller said. “So we communicated with the U.S. Embassy because that’s where he would feel more comfortable.”
The death toll from the battle between Jamaican security forces and supporters of alleged drug lord Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke that erupted over the weekend inched closer to 50 on Wednesday as police forces continued their search. And security forces are reporting Coke migth have fled the island as other known criminals continue to turn themselves in.
The shootout that led to the goverment delcaring a state of emergency was used also as a tool to “rout out other criminal elements” across the island. Consequently, 12 men on the country’s ’Most Wanted’ list turned themselves in, including another known don, Michael ‘Zeke” Phipps.
Coke was indicted last summer in a Brooklyn Court for conspiracy to distribute marijuana while he was hiding out in Jamaica.
After police made their way into the barricaded Tivoli Gardens, the garrison that served as Coke’s hideout, they went door to door but did not find Coke, reports say.
“I could not say if he is in Jamaica,” Information Minister Daryl Vaz said of Coke, “It’s very difficult to tell.”
Meanwhile, the government reported calm late Wednesday.
But signs of the three-day battle was still evident in West Kingston. Gray smoke was rising from recently extinguished fires inside Tivoli Gardens. Sporadic gunfire rang out elsewhere in West Kingston and security forces barred journalists from entering the battle zones around the capital on Jamaica’s south coast, far from the tourist resorts on the north shore of the Caribbean island, according to news reports.
But whether or not Jamaican authorities succeed in apprehending Coke, who faces extradition to the U.S., the mayhem threatens to bring downGolding – a shake-up that would be welcomed by many crime-weary Jamaicans.
As a front-page editorial Tuesday in the daily Jamaica Observer put it, “For a long time we have been heading for an explosion as those who have held the reins of government have given succor to criminals in their blinkered thirst for political power … The upshot is that we now live in a society that accepts as normal the blatant disregard for the law and respect for the rights of others – a society in which it is considered good to be bad and bad to be good. It has to stop.”
The drama that led to the government declaring a state of emergency in Kingston this week started in New York City last summer, when a grand jury indicted Coke, 41, the reputed top don of Jamaica’s most powerful drug-trafficking organization, the Shower Posse, for alleged cocaine distribution and arms smuggling. Coke denies the charges, but key evidence against him includes wiretapped conversations between Shower Posse members in the U.S. along with damning chatter recorded by law enforcement in Jamaica. Still, despite Jamaica’s usually trouble-free extradition treaty with the U.S., Prime Minister Golding – claiming unspecified “breaches” in the gathering of the U.S. wiretap evidence – balked at arresting Coke and handing him over.Golding, in fact, has acknowledged approving the idea of contacting a U.S. law firm to lobby the Obama Administration to drop the Coke extradition request. Golding says he only authorized his Jamaica Labor Party (JLP), not his government, to contact the firm. But earlier this month, Golding’s Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Ronald Robinson resigned after admitting to contacts with U.S. attorneys that “could have been inappropriate.”
By RICHARD ESPOSITO, MARK SCHONE and LUIS MARTINEZ
KINGSTON, JAMAICA — As official reports surface of accused drug lord Christopher Coke’s escape from his barricaded Kingston, Jamaica neighborhood, where Jamaican authorities have been attempting to arrest him for extradition to the U.S., ABC News has learned that a U.S. government report refers to Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding as a “criminal affiliate” of Coke.
Golding, who led resistance to Coke’s extradition before public opinion forced him to reverse himself, is described in a document read to ABC News as a “known criminal affiliate” of Christopher “Dudus” Coke. According to official U.S. accounts , Golding’s Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) was voted into power through “Coke’s murderous and strong-arm tactics.”
Recently, Golding and other senior Jamaican officials have been electronically intercepted talking to Coke inside his fortified redoubt, US authorities say.
The major police action to capture Coke began Monday morning. On Tuesday, U.S. authorities said they believed Coke had escaped through a ring of hundreds of cops and soldiers who had surrounded the West Kingston neighborhood of Tivoli Gardens. Jamaican and US authorities report that Coke may have slipped through police lines and escaped into one of two adjoining areas, either Denham Town or Jones Town.
By Monday night, Coke’s gun-toting supporters had taken control of the Kingston Public Hospital, and the hospital’s one surgeon has been treating at least 14 Coke loyalists.
Jamaican police are reporting that 30 people — 26 civilians and four members of security forces — have died during firefights in West Kingston as authorities attempt to capture Coke.
ABC News has learned that authorities believe at least 15 alleged gangsters have been slain. Police and soldiers have been doing battle with the alleged drug lord’s heavily armed supporters and outside mercenaries that Jamaican authorities say Coke has hired. U.S. authorities say some of the mercenaries are believed to be Haitian.
In addition to the Kingston Hospital gunshot victims, the University of the West Indies (UWI) Hospital has treated 21 gunshot victims. Six of those five civilians and one soldier have died.
KINGSTON (Reuters) – Jamaica declared a state of emergency in two parishes of its capital Kingston on Sunday after shooting and firebomb attacks on police stations by suspected supporters of an alleged drug lord who faces extradition to the United States.
“A state of public emergency, limited to the parishes of Kingston and St. Andrew, has been declared and will come into effect at 6:00 p.m. (2300 GMT) today,” the government’s Jamaica Information Service (JIS) said.
The limited emergency in the popular Caribbean tourist destination covered districts of the capital where gunmen on Sunday fired on two police stations and set fire to another. At least one policemen was injured.
The attackers were suspected supporters of Christopher “Dudus” Coke whom the government has called on to surrender to face a U.S. extradition request on cocaine trafficking and gun-running charges.
Streets into the poor Tivoli Gardens area of West Kingston, where Coke is believed to be hiding, were barricaded on Sunday in defiance of a police call for Coke to hand himself over, witnesses said.
The U.S. Department of State has issued a travel alert warning its citizens of the possibility of violence in Jamaica’s Kingston Metropolitan area.
Tensions in Jamaica rose over the last week after Prime Minister Bruce Golding announced he was starting proceedings to extradite Coke. U.S. prosecutors describe Coke as the leader of the infamous “Shower Posse” that murdered hundreds of people during the cocaine wars of the 1980s.
Relations between Jamaica and the United States grew strained when Jamaica initially spurned a 2009 extradition request for Coke, who is a supporter of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party and wields influence in the volatile inner city constituency that Golding represents.
JAMAICA FOLLOWING IMF LOAN PROGRAM
The violence comes as the government is moving ahead with an International Monetary Fund loan program.
The IMF in February finalized a $1.27 billion loan for Jamaica, its first loan from the fund in 15 years, to help the Caribbean nation address deep-rooted weaknesses in its economy and make it less vulnerable to economic shocks, such as last year’s financial crisis.
The United States requested Coke’s extradition in August 2009 but Jamaica initially refused, alleging that U.S. evidence against him had been gathered through illegal wiretaps.
In its annual narcotics control strategy report in March, the U.S. State Department said Coke’s ties to Jamaica’s ruling party “highlights the potential depth of corruption in the government.”
Golding acknowledged in parliament earlier this month that he had been aware that his party hired a U.S. law firm to lobby the Obama administration against pursuing Coke’s extradition.
He had initially denied knowledge of the hiring but later said he had sanctioned it in his capacity as leader of the ruling party and not as prime minister.
The admission prompted demands for the resignation of Golding, who is midway through a five-year term.
