By: Hamlet Mark
A US court sentenced Jamaican narco baron Christopher “Dudus” Coke to 23 years in prison Friday, bringing the curtain down on the career of one of the Caribbean’s most notorious gangsters.
Coke had pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy and conspiracy to commit assault in aid of racketeering following his 2010 extradition to US soil from Jamaica.
The sentence passed in New York federal court by Judge Robert Patterson was the maximum. It did not reflect the multiple murders and years of cocaine trafficking that Coke presided over in his Kingston stronghold.
The head prosecutor for Manhattan, US Attorney Preet Bharara, said that Coke’s crime empire had finally crumbled.
“From his home base in Jamaica, Christopher Coke presided over an international drug and weapons trafficking organization that he controlled through violence and intimidation for nearly two decades, enlisting an army of ‘soldiers’ to do his bidding,” Bharara said in a statement.
“With his conviction, he is no longer able to traffick drugs in the US, move guns across our border or terrorize people, and with today’s sentence, he will now spend a very long time in prison for his crimes.”©
