Fighting in Jamaica continues with gang that helped ruling party

Independent:

The same drug gang that is now battling security forces in Jamaica in a bloody urban stand-off was openly used by the island's ruling party to bring supporters to the polls and intimidate opposition voters in elections three years ago, Caribbean political experts suggested yesterday.

The "Shower Posse" gang, led by the outlaw and alleged drug kingpin Christopher "Dudus" Coke, was yesterday locked in brutal combat with more than a thousand members of Jamaica's security forces in West Kingston, in a bid to stave off their leader's extradition to the US on drug and gun charges. The clashes have so far killed more than 30, according to a Kingston hospital.

But those hostilities were in sharp contrast to previous relations between Coke and the ruling Jamaica Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Bruce Golding. David Rowe, a University of Miami adjunct professor and lawyer who specialises in Jamaican law, says they used to have an "almost symbiotic relationship".

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The Times says the fighting has now claimed 60 dead.

Fierce gunbattles turned the Jamaican capital into a war zone yesterday as soldiers stormed the stronghold of an alleged drug baron wanted in the United States, but failed to find him.

At least sixty people, including three members of the security services, are believed to have been killed in battles between security forces and supporters of Christopher “Dudus” Coke, the reputed head of an international drug gang known as the Shower Posse.

Bodies lay untouched in the streets as fighting raged in Mr Coke’s bastion in the Tivoli Gardens slum, Jamaica’s first public housing estate, and the nearby business district known as the Corporate Area. “You must realise, we are fighting a war,” Glenmore Hinds, the deputy police commissioner, said.

Gunfights broke out repeatedly between security forces and heavily armed men trying to protect Mr Coke from arrest. The Jamaican Government wants to extradite him to the US, where he faces drug-trafficking and gun-running charges.

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It will be interesting to see if the attrition will effect the viability of the drug gangs. Coke maybe sacrificing his muscle in an attempt to avoid arrest. If that is the case he will be weaker even if he evades arrest for now. It will be hard for him to evade the police forever because of the problem with living on an island. Unless he can get off of it, he will eventually be caught.