The drug submarine.
PARAMARIBO--Radj Oedit, the rice farmer on whose land police found a submarine used for trafficking drugs and seized a plane used for the same purpose, has threatened to take Government to court for tarnishing his reputation.
As part of the investigation into the two high-profile drug cases, police had issued a warrant for Oedit’s arrest last week, claiming that he had gone underground to evade capture, but the rice farmer has since insisted that he is not hiding. “I am in a hospital in the Netherlands undergoing a scheduled medical treatment,” he told journalists over the weekend.
On Monday his lawyer Irvin Kanhai announced that he will be dragging Government to court “as soon as he returns from the Netherlands.” A courtroom brawler who also represents President Desi Bouterse in the December Murders Case, Kanhai stressed that the authorities were dragging his client’s name through the mud without valid reason. “Mr. Oedit never went into hiding. In fact, if they had made the effort to check, they would have seen that he left Suriname through the Johan Adolf Pengel Airport. His departure is on record. He didn’t just leave,” Kanhai charged.
Oedit is a rice farmer and businessman who owns the parcel of land in District Saramacca on which police discovered a drugs submarine in late February and captured a drugs aircraft with 480 kilograms of cocaine on board on March 14.
The sub, a flat semi-submersible vessel, was found stuck in the mud of a shallow river on the property. Its engine appeared broken. Police have arrested eight foreigners in connection with the submarine: seven Colombian nationals and one Cuban who reside in Suriname illegally.
The plane, a four-seater Cessna Centurion twin-prop, was forced by police to land shortly after taking off from an illegal airstrip situated on Oedit’s property. The airstrip is two-kilometres long and said to be “advanced.” Police arrested two “foreigners” who flew the aircraft and five Surinamese nationals, all employees of Oedit. Two have meanwhile been released.
Oedit has consistently said that he knew nothing of the drug operations on his property. Kanhai said authorities had no right to continue blocking all access to the property, hinting that his client was suffering losses every day he could not enter.
The drug plane and suspects.
