ISLAND STATES DRUG TRAFFICKING WITNESSES KILLED

CARIBBEAN Island States Move to Shield Witnesses to Drug Trafficking

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad--When authorities here put Clint Huggins in their
witness-protection program in 1994, most Trinidadians figured he was as
good as dead.

Huggins was the star witness against the most notorious organized-crime
gang in Trinidad and Tobago, this strategic twin-island nation on a prime
route for smuggling Colombian cocaine to the United States.

Witnesses against the gang routinely had been shot, poisoned or hacked to
death in the past, and Huggins was going to testify that gang leader Dole
Chadee had ordered a hit in which four people were killed.

Sure enough, six months after Huggins moved into a military safe house, a
guard tried to poison him; the plot was thwarted only through a sting in
which Huggins faked his own death.

But in February 1996, Huggins died for real--shot, hacked up and burned
beside a road.

Chadee and eight associates ultimately were convicted of the four murders
and sentenced to death--thanks in part to Huggins' sworn affidavit. But his
slaying underscored one of the toughest challenges facing more than a dozen
Caribbean nations that Colombian drug traffickers use as steppingstones to
the United States.

In an effort to reverse the trend, top law enforcement officials of the
Caribbean countries plan to meet here this month to finalize a regional
Justice Protection Program.

The plan, which Trinidad has marshaled through the 14-member Caribbean
Community and Common Market since the death of Huggins, would create a
network of havens throughout the islands. Witnesses or endangered judges
from one nation could be hidden and protected in another.

"Protecting witnesses is one of our biggest problems in going after the
drug cartels," said Ramesh Maharaj, Trinidad's attorney general. "It's hard
to hide and protect witnesses on small islands where everyone knows each
other from drug dealers who are determined to silence them.

"We've certainly lost more than our share--probably 14 or 15 key witnesses
in the last five years. It has cost us a lot of cases." Witnesses have been
killed in several Caribbean nations, but Maharaj acknowledges that
Trinidad's crackdown on drug trafficking has made the problem most acute
here--so great that his government turned to the United States to provide
temporary refuge.

Under agreements that have made Trinidad one of the region's closest U.S.
allies in the drug war, American authorities have agreed to harbor in the
United States several key witnesses from major Trinidadian drug trials.
Among them: the soldier who tipped authorities about the 1994 plot to
poison Huggins.

Although U.S. and Trinidadian officials say the cooperative effort is
temporary, it is part of a broader alliance that officials here say is key
to attacking the cocaine trade near its source.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials say Colombian cartels
increasingly have turned to Trinidad as a transshipment hub for cocaine.

Container shipments from Trinidad--a major trading partner with which U.S.
companies invest about $1 billion a year--draw less suspicion from U.S.
Customs Service agents than those from Colombia and Venezuela, which is
seven miles from Trinidad.

Drug enforcement officials say the Colombians also have found new partners
in local gangs.

Breaking those gangs is key to Trinidad Prime Minister Basdeo Panday's
declared war on the drug trade. Driven by popular outrage and an election
promise, Panday has relied on the U.S. more heavily--and more openly--than
any other Caribbean leader.

Panday has opened Trinidad's borders to U.S.

surveillance patrols, radar systems and investigative task forces. In
return, Washington has begun the temporary witness-protection program and
pledged several million dollars' worth of patrol boats, aircraft, support
personnel and training.

So close has the alliance become that Edward Shumaker III, the U.S.
ambassador here, remarked this week: "The United States has no greater
friend in the region than Trinidad and Tobago."