GEORGETOWN, Guyana (CMC):

A 26-year-old Jamaican man on Friday said he was offered J$200,000 to fetch cocaine and agreed to do the job because he was in desperate need of the money.

Zackre Montague was speaking to Magistrate Melissa Robertson-Ogle in the Georgetown Magistrate's Court minutes after he pleaded guilty to trafficking in narcotics. He was later sentenced to three years in prison and fined GYD$10,000(USD$49).

Montague was caught at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Timehri on Christmas Day with 250 grammes of cocaine in his luggage.

Suffering

After pleading guilty, he told the court that a man in Jamaica saw that he was suffering and told him that he could make life better for him. He said the man later purchased a plane ticket for him to travel to Guyana. When he arrived in the republic a man was waiting for him.

When he was preparing to leave for Jamaica, the man whom he met at the airport gave him two tins and told him to give it back to the man who sent him.

In need of money

He said he was really in need of the money and that was why he agreed to fetch the drugs. Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) prosecutor Oswald Massiah said Montague entered Guyana on October 30 and stayed on the Essequibo Coast until December 22 when he left for Georgetown. On Christmas Day, Montague checked in his suitcase on a Caribbean Airlines flight to Jamaica via Port of Spain.

Massiah said CANU officers who were on duty noticed that Montague was acting in a suspicious manner at the internal scanner and approached him.

Based on his response to their questions, Massiah said, he was taken to the external scanner where he was asked to point out his suitcase. He pointed out a black suitcase to the officers who, on checking the interior, discovered two tins. They were searched and the cocaine was found.