As Jamaican Drug Lord is Sentenced, U.S. Still Silent on Massacre

Update: This post has been edited since it was first posted in order to reflect Coke’s sentencing.

On Friday, a U.S. federal judge sentenced the Jamaican strongman Christopher (Dudus) Coke to twenty-three years in prison. As I reported for the magazine in December, at least seventy-three civilians died in the process of getting Coke out of Jamaica and into U.S. custody. At the time, the Jamaican security forces claimed that most of the dead were gunmen who died defending Coke inside the barricaded neighborhood of Tivoli Gardens. But for these seventy-three supposed gunmen, the security forces recovered only six guns. Three of the dead were women. One was a U.S. citizen. Most appear to have been unarmed civilians, rounded up and massacred after the neighborhood was already under control.

In court, Judge Robert P. Patterson said that Coke’s violent crimes offset any lenience he might be due for his charitable deeds in Jamaica. “I concede that he did good things,” Patterson said. “But the conduct charged was of such a bad nature that it offsets the good.” According to Stephen Rosen, one of Coke’s attorneys, Coke could return to Jamaica in time for his sixtieth birthday in 2029. “The [guilty] plea was directed at keeping him from getting a life sentence,” said Rosen. “He will, if the government allows, return to Jamaica one day. That’s what he wants.”

As the question of Coke’s future heads toward a resolution, questions surrounding the loss of life that led up to his extradition remain open. Coke has admitted to serious crimes. He barricaded his neighborhood to avoid arrest, and deserves much of the blame for the Tivoli killings. Did seventy-three civilians have to die for the arrest of one drug trafficker, no matter how powerful?

The U.S. government knows, but it isn’t saying. The Drug Enforcement Administration has live video of the operation, shot from a Department of Homeland Security plane that was flying over Tivoli Gardens as the killings took place. The footage could provide invaluable assistance to Earl Witter, the Jamaican official who has been charged with investigating the massacre. But more than two years after the assault, the D.E.A. still refuses to release it.

However, a State Department cable obtained by The New Yorker shows the force with which the Jamaican Army struck Coke’s neighborhood, and the U.S. government’s knowledge of it. Sent shortly after the conflict, it says that “the JDF [Jamaican Army] fired mortars and then used bulldozers to break through the heavy barricades.”

The injuries of Marjorie Hinds, a Tivoli resident I wrote about in my earlier story, who was knocked unconscious by an explosion just as the security forces entered the neighborhood, appear to be consistent with a mortar attack. In a medical report, a doctor who examined Hinds noted “evidence of foreign body (pellet)” and “extensive scar tissue again suggestive of burns … with variant pigmentation, suggestive of possible chemical (phosphorous) ‘trauma.’ ”

“I do not know whether the J.D.F. used mortar fire,” former Prime Minister Bruce Golding, who was in office during the May, 2010, crisis, said by e-mail. A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the cable. A statement from the J.D.F. confirmed that the Army had fired mortars, though it said the weapons were used to confuse gunmen. “Mortar rounds were fired into open areas as part of a diversion,” the statement says in part. “At no time were persons or buildings targeted.” The J.D.F. did not respond to questions regarding the number of rounds fired, and whether they were smoke, illuminating, or high-explosive rounds.

Coke’s supporters say he is a community leader, or “don,” who provided for an impoverished neighborhood. Coöperating witnesses accuse Coke of being a ruthless crime boss who shipped cocaine all over the world and imprisoned his enemies in a makeshift jail where he carried out bloody executions. (Coke’s guilty plea does not include these alleged murders.) Much of Coke’s sentencing hearing focussed on testimony from a prosecution witness who testified that Coke carried out the killings himself, using a hatchet and a power saw. In his statement before the court on Friday, Coke disputed this account. “It seems like they know me more than me know me,” he said of the prosecution’s witnesses. “They talk about things I would never ever dream of doing.” Judge Patterson, however, said that allegations about Coke’s violent tendencies were corroborated by the crimes to which Coke pled guilty, including the stabbing of a marijuana dealer.

One of thousands of wiretapped calls to Coke’s phone was introduced into evidence last month at a pre-sentencing hearing. It has Coke, in 2006, conversing in patois with an associate who can be heard pledging his allegiance. (“Man love you. Man do anything for you. Mi no spar with nobody who do nah spar with you.”) At times, Coke seems to feel that the violence of those around him is getting in the way of business. (“Them nah think how to make no money. Them only think about war, war, war … if war come then war come but we can’t go outta the way to start war.”)

The mission of the Department of Homeland Security is “to ensure a homeland that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and other hazards.” What was the D.H.S. doing in Jamaica, hundreds of miles from U.S. shores, passing on intelligence to Jamaican forces as they stormed Tivoli Gardens? Was intelligence-sharing the full extent of our government’s involvement with the operation? If U.S. forces saw evidence of the massacre as it was unfolding, did they make any attempt to intervene? And given that we were the ones who insisted on Coke’s arrest, what are our obligations to the families of innocent people killed in the process?

Releasing the Tivoli video would be a good start to answering these questions. The U.S. government should share what it knows.

Photograph by David Karp/AP Photo.