Photographs: Shallow graves, torture chamber found in Tivoli

BY KIMMO MATTHEWS Observer staff reporter matthewsk@jamaicaobserver.com

Friday, June 04, 2010

THE security forces have found shallow graves and an alleged torture chamber in an area of Tivoli Gardens they believed was used by thugs to hold informal court sessions and inflict cruel punishment on dissidents.

During an informal tour of an area this morning Jamaica Defense Force soldiers showed the area located in a section of the community called Java.

They also showed another location behind McKenzie Drive where persons were buried in shallow graves.

“Civilians who did not fall in line with reputed don Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke would be tried and if found guilty would be severely punished some to the death,” said a policeman.

During the informal tour of the area several mass graves and an empty wooden coffin was found.

Soldiers also showed a shallow grave where maggot-infested human remains were found this morning. A human skull was also seen in the grave. It appeared the person was buried in a standing position.

"This is just one of the many areas where we believe shallow graves are located," one soldier said.

Residents however denied knowledge of the torture chamber or burial sites.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Shallow-graves--torture-chamber-found-in-Tivoli

James Bond
6/4/2010

I have said this many times before Tivoli Gardens need to be DEMOLISHED. Edward Seaga built this place and trained these people for his own selfish ideas and deeds.
Seaga should be investigated and prosecuted for crimes against the people of Jamaica, building a terrorist training camp, sponsoring and supporting state terrorism
What a wicked group of people, but according to Seaga, Mutty Perkings, Desmond Mckenzie and Mark Wignall these people are nice peaceful law abiding citizens. Dem wicked

Excavation of suspected burial sites in Tivoli to begin Monday

Corey Robinson

Saturday, June 26, 2010

THE police will on Monday begin excavating several suspected burial sites in Tivoli Gardens that were detected by two sniffer dogs brought in from the United States on Wednesday.

Assistant Commissioner of Police Les Green declined to say how many sites were detected, but said the information would be made public as soon as the excavations began.

"Once we start digging and we confirm that bodies are indeed at these locations, then I can say. I don't want to set off any alarms until that process has started," Green told the Observer yesterday.

The dogs are a part of a search team brought to the island to assist investigators in their search following the discovery of a corpse in a shallow grave in a section of the community called 'Rasta City' three weeks ago.

That body was found kneeling with its hands and feet bound and mouth gagged. It had several gunshot wounds.

Police said they found two 9mm shell casings, and a round of ammunition used in a AK 47 assault rifle, at that scene.

They suspect more bodies could be buried in the area, and they have extended their search in that section of the community.

The discovery of the shallow grave followed the revelation by the security forces that they found buildings in the community which were believed to be used as torture chambers, and water tunnels, which they suspect may have been used as escape routes by criminals during the joint police/military incursion in the community a month ago.

The security forces stormed the community on May 24 after gunmen aligned with former community leader Christopher 'Dudus' Coke tried to prevent his arrest to face drug and gun-running charges in the United States.

The thugs, who had blocked the entrances to the West Kingston community, traded bullets with the cops. More than 70 civilians as well as a soldier were killed in the gunfights. Two policemen were also killed by thugs as violence broke out in other parts of the city, causing commercial and other activities to come to a standstill for two whole days.

Coke, who managed to sneak out of Tivoli Gardens during the incursion, was arrested on Tuesday and extradited to the United States on Thursday. The former area leader waived his right to an extradition trial in Jamaica.

The security forces are, however, still maintaining a heavy presence in his former stronghold.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Excavation-of-suspected-burial-sites-in-Tivoli-Gardens-to-begin-Monday

Potential burial site identified in Tivoli

By KIMMO MATTHEWS, Observer staff reporter matthewsk@jamaicaobserver.com

Monday, June 28, 2010

ANOTHER potential burial site has been identified in Tivoli Gardens and the area is now being excavated.

The site, which sparked the interest of sniffer dogs in the community this morning, is very close to the first location behind Rasta City, where a body was found earlier this month.

The area has been cordoned off by the security forces.

Local police and a search team from the United States say the find is the second made by a search team and two sniffer dogs from the United States.

The team has been working in the area since last Thursday.

“Nothing has been confirmed or found so far, but the area is being excavated at this time and the work continues,” a cop on the scene told the Observer.

The US search team was called in to Tivoli Gardens following the discovery of human remains in the West Kingston community on June 9.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Potential-burial-site-identified-in-Tivoli

A Who A De Criminal?

Obama with the biggest Jamaican don at during a session with African Outreach Leaders during the 2010 G8 Summit at the Deerhurst Resort at Muskoka in Huntsville, Canada, June 25, 2010.

PM urges G8 to treat crime as a development issue

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

PRIME Minister Bruce Golding has appealed to G8 countries for greater assistance to countries like Jamaica in the fight against organised crime.

According to Golding, this assistance must be broad-based and must recognise that rooting out crime is not just a law enforcement exercise but a major development issue.

Golding was speaking in Muskoka, Canada at a special outreach session of the G8 Summit last Friday.

He called attention to the penetrative and corrosive effect of crime in struggling developing countries with weak institutional capacity and a scarcity of resources. He also outlined the measures being carried out by his administration in its renewed campaign to combat crime and declared that it was determined to use every tool in its toolbox in an all-out effort that must be sustained until the job is completed.

However, he said that countries like Jamaica cannot do it alone, given their lack of resources and the transnational nature of organised crime.

While acknowledging the assistance being provided by the US, UK, Canada and EU, he said that a more comprehensive strategy must be developed as a matter of urgency. This must include greater effort to disrupt the flow of drugs with equal emphasis being placed on both the supply and demand side of the drug trade.

He also called for more effective measures to stem the flow of illegal guns which were not only the symbol and tool of organised crime but filtered into the hands of itinerant criminals.

Golding also appealed for more technical assistance in criminal investigation, intelligence management and law enforcement techniques and cautioned that crime does not exist in a vacuum but thrives in an environment where poverty is prevalent and hope and opportunity are depressed.

Countries like Jamaica, he said, which have been battered by the global recession have had to contain expenditure on critical social programmes and find themselves fighting crime at a time when the material conditions are more favourable for crime to flourish.

He welcomed the additional resources provided by G20 countries through the International Monetary Fund and other multilateral agencies but pointed out that the conditions for accessing these funds require deflationary fiscal and monetary policies that left beneficiary countries with no room to effectively address the development dimension of the fight against crime.

He urged the international community to help countries like Jamaica to find more creative ways to deal with these challenges, even while undertaking the adjustments necessary to put their economies in good health.

"When we go into communities and dismantle the criminal organisations that are embedded there, we leave a huge space which, if not quickly filled by meaningful programmes that empower people, provide training and jobs, create opportunities and offer hope, will shortly thereafter be filled by a new, smarter generation of criminals," said Golding. "The kind of social intervention that is needed requires resources that we don't have. We need your help... lots of help", Golding said.

Police name six as 'persons of major interest'

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

THE police yesterday released the names of six men it named as major persons of interest.

They are:.

* Daniel Bartley, o/c Dan Dan;

* Shane Jackson, o/c Shane Taliban;

* Lamar Dean Thompson, o/c Lamar;

* Okido Roberts, o/c Ocki;

* Craig Dawson, o/c Shopkeeper; and

* Christopher Linton, o/c Dog Paw.

The men, the police said, should turn themselves in at any police station "as the police want to interview them for various crimes including murder and shooting".

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Police-name-six-as--persons--br--of-major-interest_7755165

Denham Town Police Station On Fire

Jamaica: drug kingpin 'may have fled country'

Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, the alleged drug kingpin at the centre of the Jamaican unrest, may have fled the country, according to the government.

Published: 11:30PM BST 26 May 2010

Coke had months to stockpile weapons in his slum stronghold while the premier wavered over US demands for his extradition.

“I could not say if he is in Jamaica,” Information Minister Daryl Vaz said of Coke, who is known as “Dudus.” “It’s very difficult to tell.”

Police and soldiers who fought their way into the barricaded Tivoli Gardens slum in gritty West Kingston were conducting a door-to-door search, and the government reported calm Wednesday. Coke’s lawyer has declined to confirm his whereabouts.

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.

The violence did not surprise island police and community groups who warned that Coke had been stockpiling weapons and preparing to defend himself since the US demanded his extradition last August. According to the US indictment, he has built a private arsenal of firearms smuggled in by gang members in the United States, sharing guns with other criminals to solidify his power as a major underworld boss.

“The situation at Tivoli is dreadful, but it’s been something that’s been simmering for a long, long time. And everybody knew that if they made the move for Coke that there would be trouble,” said Susan Goffe, a spokesman for local human rights group Jamaicans for Justice.

Fighting between police, the military and drug gangs has left at least 50 dead in Jamaica as Bruce Golding, the prime minister, vowed to restore calm after three days of violent clashes in the capital Kingston.

Hospital sources said that the dead and injured were mainly civilians caught up in the violence as troops fanned out across the city hunting an alleged drug kingpin.

Mr Golding vowed the security forces would restore law and order - three days after his government declared a state of emergency amid the worst violence to hit the Caribbean nation in decades.

"The government deeply regrets the loss of lives of members of the security forces, and those of innocent law abiding citizens who were caught in the cross fire," he told the House of Representatives.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/jamaica/7769373/Jamaica-drug-kingpin-may-have-fled-country.html

Jamaican security forces deliver bodies to hospital

Published: 1:38PM BST 26 May 2010

Around 20 bodies were taken to Kingston Public Hospital in flatbed trucks following clashes in the capital on Tuesday. One was caught on camera.

Kingston residents fear police more than drug dealer Michael 'Dudus' Coke

After days of bloodshed that turned Kingston into a warzone, the world now knows the name of fugitive drugs kingpin Christopher "Dudus" Coke. Our author examines how his gang became so powerful in Jamaica - and beyond.

By Tony Thompson in Kingston Jamaica
Published: 8:25AM BST 30 May 2010

Ask the people of Tivoli Gardens, Kingston's most notorious "garrison" community, who they consider to be the greatest threat to their wellbeing and the answer is always emphatic: the police.

Little wonder. Prior to last week's bloodshed the area had one of the lowest-reported crime rates throughout the entire city.

Although murals of the prime minister, Bruce Golding, adorn many of the pastel-coloured four-storey blocks and low-rise homes, alongside graffiti urging the residents to support his Jamaica Labour Party, life here is controlled by a force far more powerful than any government.

According to the US State department, Michael "Dudus" Coke is a major drugs and arms trafficker but to those who have fought and died to defend him over the past week, he is the one they rely on to settle local disputes, ensure their children's schoolbooks and shoes on their feet, that holes in their roofs get patched up and rubbish is collected. Most importantly, Dudus is the only one they can rely on to keep them safe from armed incursions by rival garrisons.

To grow up in Kingston is to grow up knowing death and violence from an early age. Each community is allied to and supported by one or other of the two main political parties – the JLP or the People's National Party (PNP). Local MPs fight for seats by guaranteeing the desperately impoverished substantial financial aid for their communities in return for their support. It didn't take long for those living in the worst ghettos to cotton on to the idea of using force to ensure votes in their area went a certain way or, better yet, that all those in a neighbouring community also fell in line.

Running battles between rival garrisons that started out with sticks and stones soon escalated thanks to an influx of guns. During the sixties Jamaica became a covert front in the cold war between the USA and the USSR. The PNP received guns and money from the Soviet Union via its links to Cuba while the JLP benefited in a similar fashion from the US authorities. Edward Seaga, leader of the latter party at the time, became known as CIAga.

Since then, the island has effectively been embroiled in a slow burning civil war, a conflict that flares up every now and then and most notably at election time. During the 1980 campaign, 844 people were killed in the space of two weeks, most of them on election day itself.

The death toll climbs because, particularly for the residents of the ghetto, voting a party to power isn't so much about the broader issues of lower taxes or trade deficit as the specific personal matters of whether your homes gets connected to the local water and electricity supply and whether you can get treatment at your local hospital. It is quite literally life and death.

Violent tactics have and continue to be effective because Jamaican elections are often incredibly close.

In 1967 the JLP won with 224,180 votes while the PNP polled 217,207. In 2007 the JLP polled 405,215 votes to the PNP's 402,275. Changing the voting pattern of a small number of communities can have a huge effect on the overall outcome.

The threat of violence is very real and uncompromisingly brutal. Last Wednesday while attention was focused on Tivoli Gardens, a group of gunmen from nearby St Catherine took advantage of the lighter-than-usual police presence to settle some old scores. In two separate incursions they killed eight people, ordering them out of their houses and shooting them in the streets. One of their victims was a three-month old child. It is his ability to prevent such tragedies in Tivoli Gardens that has won Dudus the love and respect of its residents.

As one Tivoli placard states: "First God, then Dudus."

Quiet and unassuming, Dudus refuses to give interviews to the media, unlike other Kingston dons who regularly hog the limelight and revel in their notoriety, insisting on being seen at every club or party event, usually surrounded by dozens of scantily clad girls. Dudus, by contrast, is far quieter and has earned himself a reputation for being something of a thinker. A graduate of one of Kingston's most prestigious high schools, he is said to be extremely bright and capable. The construction company he established, Incomparable Enterprise, still receives millions of dollars worth of government contracts each year, most of it geared towards repairs and renovations in Tivoli Gardens itself... Another of his ventures, Presidential Click, stages the island's biggest weekly street dance, Passa Passa.

Despite his easy-going nature, he remains widely feared. Those foolish enough to challenge his brand of justice often end up dead, their bodies dumped in other parts of the city to ensure any head does not reflect back on the garrison itself. Within these communities, the power of the state wanes alongside the power of the dons themselves. The fact that Tivoli has such a low crime rate is at least in part due to a general terror of the potential consequences.

When Seaga first came to power in 1980, he immediately repaid his US sponsors by launching a war on marijuana, initiating a massive eradication programme, a move which spectacularly backfired by opening the way for Jamaica to become the favoured transshipment point for Colombian cocaine en route to the US and Europe.

At the same time gunmen loyal to the losing PNP party, now starved of funds and influence, fled abroad to escape roaming execution squads. Their fearlessness, total disregard for the value of human life, willingness to use guns and contacts with the cocaine business meant the Posses – Yardies in the UK – were perfectly placed to rise to the top of the drug business.

They did so in uncompromisingly brutal fashion and, particularly in Britain, were single-handedly responsible for a massive increase in the gun murder rate during the 1980s. Women and children suddenly became legitimate targets. Dealers would find themselves relieved of their entire stashes at gunpoint and be executed for showing the slightest resistance.

When the JLP gunmen saw how much money the PNP dealers were making, they too "went foreign". For them the exodus was led by a man who liked to be called Jim Brown but was better known as Lloyd Lester Coke – Dudus's father. His drugs gang, the Shower Posse, quickly established bases in more than 20 US cities, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Brown was personally involved in a massacre in which one victim was a pregnant woman, shot while on her knees praying for her life to be spared. Between 1980 and 1985, the Shower Posse and other Jamaican gangs were linked to at least 1,500 murders along America's east coast. In the five years that followed the gangs that came to the UK were linked to at least 500 murders and more than 5,000 gun attacks.

Other gangs in the drug business had no choice but to arm themselves and fight back or face being pushed aside. The birth of the youth gun culture which is now having such a devastating effect on the lives of many inner-city teenagers in the UK and the fact that many British police forces now have permanent armed patrols can be directly traced to the influence of a few hundred individuals from this tiny Caribbean island.

At first the money was channelled back to continue the political battles, but soon the Dons focused instead on their own needs, using the excess to buy the loyalty of the communities around them. The politicians still need the gunmen or more precisely, the votes they control, but they no longer have much of a hold on them. The wealth generated by the drug trade resulted in a new breed of gang leaders who no longer look for handouts and called their own shots.

Edward Seaga described Jim Brown as "the protector of Kingston's poor" and led his funeral procession, despite the fact that the Jamaican Police had charged Brown with murder on 14 separate occasions. The charges were dropped or he was acquitted after witnesses failed to turn up at court. After one acquittal his supporters gave him a massive gun salute on the steps of the courthouse before carrying him off to Tivoli on their shoulders.

Dudus too has little fear of local law enforcement. He has, after all, been arrested with little incident several times in the past. Most recently he pleaded guilty to possession of a cannabis cigarette and was fined $200. The difference then was that the charges were purely local.

Like other international targets of America's war on drugs, what Jamaica's dons fear most is extradition. On their home turf, witnesses can be intimidated, senior officials can be bribed. Charges can be dropped. Deprived of their ability to do this in America, they face lengthy sentences that they are unlikely to ever return.

Dudus's father, Jim Brown mysteriously burned to death in a maximum-security cell, just days before he was to be extradited to the US to face murder and drug-racketeering charges, and suspicions were high that he had been deliberately silenced. His lawyer, Tom Tavares-Finson – now representing Dudus – famously remarked at the time: "If you believe Jim Brown just burned to death, by accident, in his jail cell, you'll believe in the tooth fairy." Little wonder Dudus, too has chosen to remain at large.

Crime author Tony Thompson's latest book, Gang Land, was published by Hodder & Stoughton this month

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/jamaica/7783565/Kingston-residents-fear-police-more-than-drug-dealer-Michael-Dudus-Coke.html