The controversy over the recent separate and unrelated arrests of two elderly American tourists in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) on charges of each carrying a single bullet in their luggage escalated on Friday, with US Senator Bill Nelson alleging that the incidents look like a “shakedown”.
In Florida, Nelson told reporters that he was widening his request for an inquiry into the arrests, the Sarasota Herald Tribune reported.
On Thursday, Nelson and fellow US senator Ted Cruz from Texas sent a letter to John Dinkelman, charge d’affaires at the American Embassy in Nassau, The Bahamas, requesting an “expedited investigation”.
On Friday, Nelson said he is expanding his original request to include not only similar incidents that have occurred since January but also “to include anytime.”
On April 25, TCI police arrested Cathy Sulledge Davis, the 60-year-old co-owner of a Dallas real estate firm, and charged her with carrying ammunition.
Davis appeared before the chief magistrate on April 26, when she was remanded into custody pending a sufficiency hearing to be held in the Supreme Court on Friday June 7, 2013.
She was, however, granted leave to apply for bail in the Supreme Court, at which time she was released on $4,000 cash bail.
In a similar incident the following day, also at the Providenciales International Airport, police arrested Horace Avery Norrell Jr., a retired neurosurgeon, who had traveled to the TCI with his wife to celebrate his 80th birthday. He was also charged with carrying ammunition.
Norrell was also remanded into custody pending a sufficiency hearing to be held on June 7.
After spending the weekend in jail, because no judge would stay late on a Friday to hear his bail application, the senior citizen was released on $4,000 bail.
“If this is a shakedown scheme, the government of the Turks and Caicos clearly has an interest to get to the bottom of this,” Nelson said. “If this kind of scheme were to be corroborated, what American tourist is going to go there?”
Norrell already spent three nights in a jail cell on the island of Providenciales waiting for a bail hearing.
“I understand it was a horrific experience,” said one of his attorneys, Marcia Silvers of Miami, at a press conference on Friday in Miami, the Herald Tribune reported..
“There was a toilet in the middle of the cell that did not work at all, did not flush,” she said. “The jail was the type of cell where you close the door, it is very dark, very unnerving.”
“If I were the Turks and Caicos, and knowing my main source of income is American tourists, the last thing in the world they need is some kind of scheme that is shaking down Americans who look like they can pay a $4,000 bond to leave the island,” Nelson said. “Because what that will do, that will dry up their tourism, if this in fact continues.”
The TCI Tourist Board said on Friday that these are unprecedented events for the destination and are most regrettable for all involved, including “Brand TCI”.
In his one earlier public comment, TCI Governor Ric Todd said only that the law must be followed.
Source: Caribbean News Now
