Drug trafficking convict petitions for bail
TERRENCE Azore, who was sentenced to four years imprisonment for trafficking 755 grammes of cannabis (marijuana) following a drug bust at Golden Grove, West Coast Berbice, in 2010, has petitioned the High Court for bail, pending his appeal against conviction and sentence. The jail term had been imposed on him by Magistrate Roby Benn, after he was found guilty in the lower court.
Azore , of Lot 577 Melanie Damishana, East Coast Demerara, had denied the allegation that he had trafficked the narcotic.
But, at his trial, Police Inspector Donna Grant-Fraser, prosecuting, led evidence that the convict was a passenger in HB 8362, en route to Georgetown from Berbice, when the vehicle was stopped and searched.
Among the four passengers, including two women, Azore had a haversack, which, when opened in his presence, contained taped portions of the prohibited plant, the magistrate was told.
However, in his petition, filed by attorney-at-law Mr. Peter Hugh, the petitioner said the magistrate may have erred in law, in that the penalty he inflicted was excessive and unreasonable, given the circumstances of the case.
Meanwhile, Azore is on $500,000 bail, awaiting trial on a robbery under arms indictment at the Berbice Assizes.
On August 11, 2006, heavily armed bandits stormed into Rose Hall Town, Corentyne, also in Berbice, where they robbed two commercial banks of $11,200,000.
One week later, in a Joint Services exercise, eight bank robbers were confronted, shot and killed in the backlands of Black Bush Polder, at Corentyne, too.
However , three others, including Azore, 43, Harlan Lepps, 34, and Henry Lindie, 43, both of De Veldt, Berbice River, are facing the joint accusation of armed robbery committed on Demerara Bank.