News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. June 8, 2012: Jamaican drug lord, Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke will spend the next 23 years of his life in jail, U.S. District Judge Robert P. Patterson ruled Friday.
Coke, the leader of the Jamaica-based international criminal organization, the “Shower Posse,” also known as the “Presidential Click,” was sentenced today, June 8, 2012. The 23 years jail sentence had been recommended from March by prosecutors.
Coke pled guilty on August 31, 2011 to one count of racketeering conspiracy and one count of conspiracy to commit assault with a dangerous weapon in aid of racketeering.
Coke, 45, had been slated to be sentenced at 2 p.m. on March 16th in Manhattan federal court but his sentencing on racketeering charges was put off following the conclusion of an evidentiary hearing.
The prosecution’s evidence included a written testimony from the witness, who said that Coke killed his taxi driving friend in cold blood because he did not pay up the US$6 a day in extortion money.
A witness has told the judge that Coke killed a police officer kneeling down “as if in supplication to the Father,” forced women into narco trafficking and sex with his “HIV cronies,” and called for everyone if the Kingston area to pay him protection money to operate their businesses.
Coke, a hero to some in the West Kingston slum of Tivoli Gardens, was captured in 2010 in Jamaica during a stand-off between his ghetto followers and Jamaican soldiers. Some 70 persons died during the show down and Coke was later captured, dressed in a wig and disguised as a woman in a car driven by a Jamaican pastor.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, in commenting on the sentencing, stated: “From his home base in Jamaica, Christopher Coke presided over an international drug and weapons trafficking organization that he controlled through violence and intimidation for nearly two decades; enlisting an army of ‘soldiers’ to do his bidding. With his conviction, he is no longer able to traffick drugs in the U.S., move guns across our border, or terrorize people, and with today’s sentence; he will now spend a very long time in prison for his crimes.”
