Jamaica Salt

This guy – Michael Christopher Coke – who is 41 years old now has many aliases.  The President, Pressie, Shortman (due to his stature), Mikey and of course, Dudus.   Wanted by the US on drug and gun charges, still at large. Read more about him here and here.

Dudus’s father was Lester Lloyd Coke aka Jim Brown – now dead, he was also wanted by the US authorities in 1988 who accused him of running a multi million dollar drug ring known as the shower posse; so named for spraying showers of bullets in over a 1,000 alleged murders. Read all about Jim Brown here. and a video here on him.

Before Jim Brown, there was Claude Massop.  All well known area leaders, or dons from the JLP controlled Tivoli Gardens.  The photo below shows the painted murals on the boundary walls of Tivoli Gardens who still revere them today.

Dudus is the classic Robin Hood type figure in his home turf in west kingston, jamaica – listen to people who know him and have met him here.

The US asked for his extradition in Aug 2009 and were damning in their criticism over corruption and failure to hand him over in the 2010 Narcotics report.   See more on this here.

So when the pressure on PM Bruce Golding became too much to bear, he signed the extradition request in a televised address to the nation, following nine months of foot dragging.

The roadblocks went up around Tivoli and they prepared for a police shoot out which came a few days later.

Watch this video

Here’s an interesting interview with Edward Seaga afterwards (former JLP PM and creator of Tivoli Gardens) – he  says there are many more deaths than are being reported, he says his sources tell him there are 150 people dead.  He calls for people in police detention to be released and he says that locals should have been allowed to leave the area much sooner.   He also says the 64 thousand dollar question is why did Golding intervened in the Dudus extradition when he should have let it go to the courts to decide.

The historical links between the dons and the politicians is well documented in this book , and university scholars have also documented the links here in the kerr report , this relationship changed in the 1970′s when the dons entered into the drugs trade and had the resources and fire power to do their own thing, but links are still said to exist in the form of government contracts awarded to Dudus’s legitimate companies and allegations over control of Kingston wharf and the custom and excise contained therein.

Dudus’s lawyer was the govt senator Tom Tavares-Finson until the heat got turned up.