Bladen 12 Drug Plane Trial Resumes

The trial for the group of men accused of facilitating a 2021 drug plane landing, known as the Bladen 12, continued today in Belize City. The men appeared today before Magistrate Baja Shoman at the special courtroom being used at the Charles Bartlett Hyde Building on Mahogany Street. The case began on February 5, 2024, and saw several delays, including a voir dire (trial within a trial) that lasted over a year. Attorney for several of the accused, Dickie Bradley, said that the trial is now entering into a process of evidence tendering that is aimed at cutting down the time it will take to complete. 

Richard “Dickie” Bradley, Attorney: “What has happened is that we are in the process, all parties have agreed that we are in the process of a procedure whereby persons who are witnesses,  primarily police witnesses, we from the defense don’t have any questions for them. If the prosecution feels what they have written in their statements can assist their case they would still want the court to have access to that information. So we are saying, fine,  read it into the record and I don’t wast no time asking questions that don’t have to really be asked. So where we are is that in fact Assistant Superintendent of Police Robert Novello is reading into the court records the statement of witnesses who, let’s get it on, you know? So that’s where we are. It is quite a number, we have mentioned the figures, quite a number of witnesses have given….. these are mainly police officers and a whole lot of police officers see the same thing. You run a risk when everybody says the same thing, they start to not see the real same thing but that’s how the thing goes. So we’ll be doing that the rest of the week.”

The group consists of eight civilians and four former police officers who were on the force at the time of arrest. They are charged jointly with 2 counts of possession of a controlled drug with intent to supply, one count of conspiracy to land a plane at an unlicensed aerodrome, and one count of abetment of the importation of a controlled drug. In February, the court struck out four confession statements from the evidence, after determining from the evidence that the men only confessed because they were severely beaten by the police.