Woman accused of smuggling says she was threatened
Officers at airport found 7.7 kilograms of heroin in false bottoms of her suitcases
A Vancouver resident who is on trial for heroin smuggling says her life was threatened just months after she was arrested at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport with more than seven kilograms of the drug.
“I don’t want to die. I’m too young,” Serena Narinesingh told the jury hearing her case at the Montreal courthouse on Thursday. She was referring to a threat she says she received while in detention at Montreal’s Tanguay Detention Centre in November 2015.
Narinesingh had been arrested four months earlier when Canada Border Services Agency officers found 7.7 kilograms of heroin in the false bottoms of her suitcases, which arrived a day after she returned from a trip to Kigali, Rwanda.
She said she travelled to the African country to visit a boyfriend, Abdallah, and she now believes Abdallah and his uncle set her up. She said she believes they packed the heroin in the false bottoms of suitcases they had purchased for her after her own suitcases were heavily damaged on route to Kigali.
Narinesingh, 28, told the RCMP about the alleged threat on Dec. 9, 2015, at a meeting she had requested with Corp. Kyle Mink, the main investigator in her case, and a colleague of Mink’s. During that interview, she admitted she had told Mink several lies during a previous interview with him, after she was arrested on July 18, 2015.
During the later interview, she said several men in her life had taken on a more menacing nature. For example, a man named Sam had contacted her at the Tanguay Detention Centre and threatened to “fix her” or her family. She said she had known Sam since she was 20, when she worked in Surrey, B.C. performing erotic massages.
She told the jury on Thursday that the threats began after she reached out to the men she knew for help. She alleged that the uncle of her boyfriend Abdallah also threatened to kill her.
“I don’t know who these people (really) are,” she said. “I don’t know who they know. I don’t know if they have someone working (for them) at the jail watching me.”
While being cross-examined by Crown prosecutor Anne-Marie Manoukiane, the accused said she believed she was going to have a “private trial” and that evidence heard during it would be placed under a publication ban. Narinesingh’s responses indicated she was under the impression that a publication ban placed on a pretrial conference — which is standard as a case heads toward a jury trial in Canada — would be extended to her current trial. Manoukiane is scheduled to resume her cross-examination on Monday.
I don’t know who these people (really) are. I don’t know who they know. I don’t know if they have someone working (for them) at the jail watching me.