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Pivot employees reported what turned out to be 210 kilos of cocaine hidden in the “bay of avionics” of their plane in April, only because the Dominican authorities treated the crew and their seven passengers as suspects and they threw them behind bars.
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June 7, 2022 • 2 hours ago • 5 minutes reading • 65 comments A Canadian airline crew was arrested and jailed after finding and reporting cocaine hidden on their plane in the Dominican Republic. From left, flight attendant Christina Carello, mechanic BK Dubey, first officer Aatif Safdar, flight attendant Alexander Rozov and captain Rob DiVenanzo at a recent citizenship ceremony in Dubey. They urge Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to press for his release. Photo of Handout
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The 20 or so local inmates who shared a small cell in the Dominican Republic with a Canadian airline crew spoke only Spanish. But they did not allow the language barrier to stand in the way of their endless attempts to extort foreigners.
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Dominican prisoners simply used the translation app on their cell phones to convert the threats of violence and death into English, says Captain Rob DiVenanzo, who led the Pivot Airlines crew.
“It was atrocious,” the Guelph, Ontario resident recalled in an interview this week. “Every day you woke up in the morning and the threats started: ‘You’ll have money today or you won’t sleep tonight.'”
Pivot employees reported what turned out to be 210 kilos of cocaine hidden in the “bay of avionics” of their plane in April, only because the Dominican authorities treated the crew and their seven passengers as suspects and they threw them behind bars. A judge released the Canadians on bail later in April on the condition that each pay $ 23,000 and not leave the country, citing a lack of evidence incriminating them.
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But prosecutors have since appealed the decision.
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The Canadian plane was facing drug trafficking, Dominican prosecutors allege despite lack of evidence
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Canadian pilots jailed in Dominican Republic after large cocaine depot on plane
And DiVenanzo said the group is convinced that if the appeal is successful, it will not survive another period in this 13-by-13-foot cell.
That is why he is asking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to raise his case when he meets with Dominican President Luis Abinader on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas meeting in Los Angeles on Wednesday. Trudeau should urge Abinader to let Canadians leave the country, as they actually discovered the attempted drug trafficking, he said.
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Even on bail they have had to live under armed guard in the face of death threats.
“We are asking the Prime Minister to (help) secure our release as soon as possible,” DiVenanzo said. “We are five members of the airline flight crew who are in hell, all for doing the right thing … Instead of being treated like heroes or witnesses to something, the government of the Dominican Republic sees us as to bad ones “.
Cecely Roy, a spokeswoman for Trudeau, limited herself to commenting on Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly’s comments last Thursday, stating that she would meet with her Dominican counterpart this week and that she had “seized” the issue. .
A government source said more generally on Tuesday that “this issue is likely to be raised at any meeting with the Dominican Republic.”
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Rob DiVenanzo, captain of a Canadian charter plane, says he and his crew have been facing “hell” since they were arrested in the Dominican Republic for a cocaine depot on their plane which they found and reported. He urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to press his Dominican counterpart at a meeting Wednesday for his release. Photo of Handout
The extraordinary case has already prompted the Airline Pilots Association – North America’s largest commercial aviator union – and the unions representing Pivot’s two flight attendants and a mechanic to warn other crews. of the dangers of flying in the Dominican Republic.
Pivot CEO Eric Edmondson has suggested that all Canadians think twice before traveling to the Caribbean. Canada is the second largest source of business for the Dominican Republic’s crucial tourism industry, sending nearly a million tourists each year before the pandemic.
Previous reports from human rights and law enforcement groups have highlighted chronic abuses of the Dominican legal system, and the World Justice Project ranked it 100th out of 139 countries on the absence of corruption in its “rule of law index.” “of 2021.
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Pivot had moved a group of potential investors from an Alberta company and their guests to the resort town of Punta Cana in late March for a vacation. When the crew that was to take them home was preparing the CRJ-100 regional jet on April 5, mechanic BK Dubey discovered a box inside the avionics bay, which contains computers and cables.
The Pivot Airlines plane is at the airport in the Dominican Republic after 210 kilos of cocaine were found hidden on board. Photo of National Directorate of Drug Control / Twitter
The airline reported the find to authorities in Canada and the Dominican Republic, and led police to discover seven more bags on the same premises, all with cocaine. Officers then arrested the crew and passengers, and then told a judge that “intelligence” had alerted them to the storage.
The men and women were placed in separate prisons, the men in a small cell that, according to DiVenanzo, held up to 26 people at a time, meaning they sometimes had to sleep standing up. The sink was a hole in the floor.
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With the guards paying little attention, the cell was dominated by an inmate “boss” sitting in a grass chair while DiVenanzo, the de facto representative of the crew, sat in a bucket upstairs and listened. their threats and demands.
“The inmates inside know everything about you, they know your case,” he said. “They treated us like those who found something wrong and denounced it.”
The other inmates, most of whom had cell phones, wanted Canadians to call their families in Canada and have money wired to alleged Dominican criminals through Western Union or other means. Communication was facilitated by telephone translation applications.
We are five members of the flight crew of the airlines that are in hell, all to do the right thing
DiVenanzo said they decided as a group not to give in to the lawsuits, thinking any transfer of cash would simply be followed by further extortion. They also chose not to alert the guards of their situation, fearing that doing so would lead to deadly retaliation by inmates.
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But inmates became so angry about their refusal to give in that they expelled Canadians to the toilet area for the past three days of their time in jail, depriving them of food or water all the time, DiVenanzo says.
By the ninth day, they had lost hope, says the captain.
“We were expecting to be injured that evening, wounded or dead,” he says. “The inmates were not happy with us, we did not provide them with money and they made it very clear that some severe actions would be taken.”
Eight black gym bags, each with 25 smaller packs of cocaine, for a total of 200 packs, were located in the control compartments of the plane. Photo of National Directorate of Drug Control / Twitter
But that day, they were finally released on bail.
They have since been housed in a “somewhat safe” place protected by armed guards, DiVenanzo said. The security company hired by Pivot reports that Canadians regularly receive “serious” death threats, most likely from the criminal organization whose cocaine shipment they helped intercept. Two weeks ago the pilot turned 54, what he calls a “terrible” birthday.
If allowed to leave the country, the group is more than willing to participate in any future court proceedings related to the case, says DiVenanzo. But if they put them back in jail, as local prosecutors want, they fear the worst, he says.
“We’re all pretty confident when it comes to saying that if we come back in, there’s a serious and serious risk to our lives,” the Pivot captain said. “Honestly, I don’t think we’re going to make it.”
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