Drug Trafficking Case Crumbles

Miguel Meseguer

Six Central American men who were, up until early this morning, on remand facing drug trafficking-related offenses are now free men. They were accused for the landing of a plane loaded with almost three thousand pounds of cocaine off the Coastal Road last September.  This morning, after the prosecution withdrew the charges for lack of evidence, Chief Magistrate Sharon Fraser informed the men that the charges against them were dismissed.  Attorney for two of the men, Oswald Twist, requested that their personal effects that were confiscated when they were arrested be returned to them. Thereafter, the Immigration Department processed them for their return to their respective countries.  The men: Hondurans, Allan Mejia, Norlan Lopez, David Discua, Carlos Gomez; Mexican Miguel Cruz Meseguer and Ecuadorian Juan Larea Cruz were charged with possession of controlled drugs and landing an aircraft without permission from the Minister of Civil Aviation.

Juan Cruz

They are all scheduled to depart Belize on Thursday. The case could have gone all the way to the Supreme Court, where the men could have faced a trial by a jury, but after the prosecution presented its disclosure at the Magistrate’s Court, the defense attorneys argued that there was nothing that the prosecution had that linked the men to the plane, the money or the drugs. The prosecutor, guided by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, withdrew the charges.