Bermudian drug-runner deported from St. Maarten

<a href=www.theroyalgazette.com>Picked them up off the coast of Venezuela or Colombia By Karen Smith A Bermudian drug-runner who was sentenced to just 16 months in prison after being caught off the coast of St. Maarten with the Bermuda equivalent of $200 million of marijuana was deported to the Island last night. Winston Franklin Robinson, 60, formerly of Mangrove Bay, served only half of his sentence before being released by prison officials on the Caribbean island. He was deported from St. Maarten yesterday, and was expected to arrive back on the Island on the American Airlines flight after 10 p.m. last night. A Government spokesman said last night: “He has served his sentence and is now being deported back to the country of his birth.” Robinson was arrested on June 25 last year along with five other men after the Dutch Coast Guard intercepted his boat Carl Senior 35 miles off the small Dutch Antilles island of Saba. When Robinson was sentenced in September, prosecutors asked that the six men be sentenced to two years for the charges of transporting and attempting to import the 10,400 pounds of marijuana on the boat into St. Maarten. However, the judge said a substantial part of the indictment could not be proven. During the course of Robinson’s trial, the court heard how his boat had broken down and had been drifting for four days before a US Coast Guard cutter received a radio signal from the vessel and alerted Dutch authorities. A Dutch naval vessel was despatched and four men were arrested on board the boat, which was found drifting and piled high with 142 bales of the drug. Robinson and another man were arrested soon after on a dinghy having headed out to sea in search of help. On sentencing, the judge said the prosecution had not proved the drugs were intended for St. Maarten, where they would have carried a street value of less than $2 million. However, in Bermuda, the street value of the marijuana would have been more than $200 million. Robinson had claimed the drugs were destined for Antigua and that he had picked them up off the coast of Venezuela or Colombia –- he was unsure which country – after being approached in a Curacao bar by a man who asked if he wanted to make some money. But the judge also said the prosecution’s claim that the drugs had been transported, exported and transited when the six were apprehended could not be proved. In the end, he sentenced the men only for possession of the drugs. All six received 16 months, less the time they had spent in prison. The boat was turned over to St. Maarten authorities. Robinson had previously told authorities that he had no desire to return to Bermuda after his sentence, and wished instead to go to Australia. However, he was told that as he was a Bermudian citizen, he must be deported to the Island when he was eventually released from prison. At the time of the case last year, Bermuda Police said they had been watching Robinson’s movements for years as he was believed to have been linked to rings running drugs to the Island. And over the course of the Kirk Roberts trial last summer, it emerged that Robinson had been on board the sailboat that delivered drugs to Roberts in 2000.