caribbean roundup

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (AP) – A former government minister organized the murder of a political rival by scheduling a meeting at a beach house where a contract killer fatally shot him, one of the alleged hit men testified recently.

Former Local Government Minister Dhanraj Singh, 44, has pleaded innocent to murder charges in the 1999 shooting death of Hansraj Soomarsingh, 45, who was head of a municipal government body in southern Trinidad.

Elliot Hypolite is the prosecution’s main witness in the High Court trial which began Tuesday. Hypolite testified that he went to Soomarsingh’s beach house with two other men to commit the murder.

He said he and one of the other men, Steve Cummings, walked to the doorway of the house and Cummings killed Soomarsingh with two shots. Hypolite said Singh paid him Trinidadian $7,000 (US$1,200) to help carry out the kill-ing, but he didn’t know how much the other alleged killers were paid.

Hypolite was given immunity to testify against Singh and Cummings was murdered in 2000, a case that re-mains unsolved, police said.

Son Of Pharmaceutical Business Owner Freed By Kidnappers

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (AP) – Kidnappers freed the son of a pharmaceutical business owner Saturday nearly a week after his abduction, police said.

Ryan Singh, 25, was left unharmed on the side of a road in Arouca, some 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of the capital, police said. Armed men ab-ducted him as he left his girlfriend’s east of the capital on Sept. 21.

Police did not say whether a ransom had been paid. The kidnappers had de-manded Trinidadian $2 million (US $333,000) from Singh’s family.

There were 29 ransom kidnappings in Trinidad last year, three times more than in 2001. There have been at least 37 since January, police said.

Shakti Pooran, 19, whose father owns a glass supply business, remained miss-ing Saturday, police said. His abductors have demanded a Trinidadian $200,000 (US$33,000) ransom.

Police Patrol Streets Of Shantytown On Third Day Of Protests

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Police fired teargas at crowds of demonstrators who massed for a third day to protest the killing of a gang leader loyal to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

At least three people were injured with gunshot wounds during the pro-tests in the northwestern town of Go-naives, about 110 kilometers (70 miles) northwest of Port-au-Prince, the capital.

Witnesses told the independent Ra-dio Vision 2000 that police exchanged gunfire with protesters. Police had no immediate comment.

Violent demonstrations have raged since the bullet-riddled body of Amiot Metayer, leader of the so-called "Can-nibal Army’’ in Gonaives, was found Monday. Schools, public buildings and stores have remained closed in the port town, still smoldering from burning barricades.

Some residents viewed the 42-year-old Metayer as a hoodlum, whose gang terrorized government opponents and rivals. But others viewed him as a Robin Hood of sorts who lavished them with gifts.

Police Detain Woman With High-Powered Rifles, Ammunition

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) – Police detained a woman transporting several high-powered rifles and hundreds of rounds of live ammunition, authorities said recently.

The 30-year-old woman, whose bro-ther is on Guyana’s 10 most wanted list of suspects, was detained outside the capital of Georgetown, police said.

She was a passenger in a rented car traveling east toward Buxton late Tues-day when a police patrol pulled it over because the car was acting suspiciously, authorities said, without giving de-tails.

Police said they found a large suitcase in the car containing five high-powered weapons, including an M-16 rifle, at least 440 rounds ammunition and a telescopic scope. The woman did not have licenses for the weapons, police said.

A man driving the car was detained but later released when detectives de-termined he did not know what was in the suitcase, police said. Authorities did not say how the two knew each other.

The woman’s brother is Rondell Raw-lins, 28, who is wanted by police in connection with the killings of two police officers, several armed robber-ies, carjackings and illegal weapons possession, police said.

Living Example Of Insect-eating Creature Believed extinct Found

HAVANA (AP) – With its long snout and tiny body covered with spiky, long brown hair, the worm-munching creature known as Solenodon Cubanus long has been a mystery to zoologists, who believed it to be extinct.

But a farmer in eastern Cuba recently found the first live specimen of the ancient and enigmatic creature seen in four years, local media said.

The find proved conclusively that Solenodon Cubanus still survives, and raised hopes that the curious animal dubbed "Alejandrito" may have other relatives roaming the island.

"Only a few have been seen since the 1980s," Douglas Long of the Cali-fornia Academy of Sciences’ Depart-ment of Ornithology and Mammalogy said Wednesday from San Francisco.

"To capture a live one is very interesting. Very little is known about them so any information obtained from study-ing it can be very helpful.

"All we can hope is that there are more and that they could have babies," he said.

The discovery of the animal, known locally as an almiqui (pronounced ahl-mee-KEE) was reported this week by Cuba’s Prensa Latina news agency.

Named "Alejandrito" by the farmer that found it in the eastern province of Holguin, the male almiqui weighs 1 pound, 8 ounces and veterinarians de-clared the animal in perfect health.

The creature looks like a brownish woolly badger with a long, pink-tipped snout and can measure up to nearly 20 inches. A stuffed version of the animal is on display at the Natural History Museum in Havana.

The nocturnal animal burrows un-derground during the daytime, explain-ing why it is rarely seen. After the sun goes down, it emerges to root out worms, larvae and insects.

Prensa Latina said the last reported sightings of the creatures were in 1972 in Cuba’s eastern province of Guan-tanamo and in 1999 in the eastern province of Holguin.

Long said he believed several of the animals also were found dead in the 1980s, usually killed by dogs.

"They are extremely uncommon, and they are extremely shy," he said.

After holding "Alejandrito" for two days of study and medical tests, Cuban scientists declared the almiqui to be in excellent health and marked it before release in the general area where was found.

"Even the study of this one animal will increase our understanding of the species as a whole," Long said. "I’ve never seen a live one, just stuffed ones in museums and the Solenodon skull we here at the academy."

Long said several Solenodon species once lived in the Caribbean islands, but were slowly wiped out by deforestation as land was cleared for lumber and to grow sugar cane.

The introduction over the centuries of large carnivores, especially dogs, to the islands helped kill off most other Solenodon varieties, he said. The So-lenodon Cubanus lived only in Cuba.

The Solenodon Paradoxus that lives on the neighboring island of Hispaniola is the only surviving relative species, he said.