Former Shower Posse member to testify against Dudus
Published:Tuesday | May 22, 2012 | 10:53 AM
Daraine Luton, Senior Staff Reporter
A former Shower Posse member will this morning take the stand to testify against his one-time boss, Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, as United States prosecutors seek to have the confessed criminal sent to prison for 23 years.
In court documents filed in the US District Court in New York yesterday, the prosecution said it intends to call two cooperating witnesses, one a high-level member of Christopher Michael Coke’s criminal organization in Jamaica.
The prosecution says the other individual that will testify against Coke fraudulently obtained United States visas at Coke’s direction, to be used by couriers who brought the defendant’s cocaine to the United States.
In addition, the prosecution said it will be calling a third witness who served as a senior “counselor” to Coke’s organization.
In the court documents, the prosecution claims that the witness observed many of the same aspects of Coke’s control over Tivoli Gardens – the group of armed “Shotters,” importation of large quantities of firearms, multiple, brutal murders, the control over sales of cocaine and crack cocaine in the Tivoli Gardens area, and the use of females to transport cocaine to the United States.
Last August, Coke accepted a plea agreement in which he confessed to racketeering, conspiracy and conspiracy to commit assault in aid of racketeering in the United States.
"I was the leader and organiser of a group known as the Presidential Click in Jamaica. As such, I directed certain criminal activity on (Presidential Click's) behalf, which included - but was not limited to - the distribution of marijuana, cocaine and crack cocaine both in Jamaica and the United States from 1999 through 2010," Coke admitted in court documents.
"Some of these activities took place in the Bronx, New York, in 2007. I also directed the purchase of firearms and the importation of those firearms into Jamaica for the purposes of furthering activities of the group."
daraine.luton@gleanerjm.com