Canadian airline crew held in Dominican Republic over cocaine on plane to be freed: CEO
Prosecutors have signalled they will let the Pivot Airlines crew and their passengers leave the country after seven months, but the deal is not final
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The long, sometimes-terrifying ordeal of Canadians arrested in the Dominican Republic after an airline crew reported contraband stashed on their plane appears to finally be coming to an end.
Prosecutors in the resort town of Punta Cana filed paperwork in court Friday that would let the Pivot Airlines crew and their passengers leave the country, after spending seven months in jail and under effective house arrest, said Pivot CEO Eric Edmondson.
The Canadians have been detained despite the fact it was the airline’s employees who reported bags of what turned out to be cocaine hidden in the aircraft, and a local judge saying there was no evidence linking them to the drugs.
“We are deeply relieved that these five Canadians will soon return home to their families and loved ones,” Edmondson said in a statement, referring to his own employees. “We are grateful for their courage, resilience, and honesty throughout this devastating ordeal. When they return home to Canada, they will be returning as heroes – as they rightly deserve.”
Rob DiVenanzo, the flight’s captain, said the crew received the news from Pivot Thursday night at about 9 p.m. while in their Dominican “safe house.” They’d heard rumblings in August the prosecutors might drop the case against them, then nothing transpired for the last three months, he said.
“It really was a bit of a shock — a good shock,” he said in an interview. “Right now I’m excited but I’m also cautiously optimistic.”
The last seven months have been a roller-coaster of emotions, both for him and his wife and two children in southern Ontario, said DiVenanzo.
“Being apart, it has just been a hellacious situation for us.”
The motion filed by prosecutors still has to be approved by the court, which Pivot expects to happen early next week.
Given all that’s occurred in the extraordinary case, the company is urging the Dominican government to start the ball rolling “without delay,” the CEO said.
Earlier Friday, Edmondson struck a more cautious note, saying the group has received similar news twice previously, only for it to come to naught.
“It’s looking good,” he said in an interview. “(But) it’s very premature because we’ve been here before, so it’s too early to spike the ball yet…. We have been here and it just flat-lined.”
The Canadians were held in jail for several days after reporting the contraband, then were freed on bail after giving up their passports and agreeing not to leave the Dominican Republic. They have never been charged, nor even questioned by police, Pivot says. And prosecutors appealed the bail decision, raising the spectre of their being sent back to prison.
With its harsh treatment of foreigners who seemed guilty only of reporting a crime, the case shone a light on a legal system that’s been accused by various international bodies of widespread corruption and human-rights abuses.
Representatives of the Dominican embassy in Ottawa and the country’s Public Ministry, which prosecutes criminal charges, could not be reached for comment by deadline.
As the employees’ nightmare dragged on, the airline lobbied the federal government for help, while unions representing the crew warned of the dangers of flying to the country.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raised the Canadians’ plight with Dominican President Luis Abinader earlier this year, as did Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly with her counterpart. In response to a question from Conservative Sen. David Wells last month, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra warned that the Dominican Republic risked sending a message to the world that it’s unsafe for commercial air crews to fly there.
Wells said Friday he was relieved by the latest news, but dismayed that the federal government didn’t do more to bring about their release.
“Mostly it was diplomatic niceties,” he said. “Sometimes when dealing with countries like the Dominican Republic that have suspect judicial systems, you have to play a stronger hand.”
The Pivot CRJ-100 jet had flown a group of seven potential investors in an Alberta company and their guests to Punta Cana early this spring. A new crew returned to fly them back to Toronto on April 5, when a mechanic flying with the plane discovered a strange bag in the avionics bay, an enclosure under the aircraft.
The crew reported their find to the airline, which then contacted the RCMP in Canada and Dominican police. Local officers discovered several more bags in the avionics bay, announcing later that they contained 210 kilograms of cocaine.
The crew and passengers were then arrested and jailed, the men confined to a tiny cell that contained several accused drug traffickers, who threatened and tried to extort them constantly over nine days.
Judge Francis Yojary Reyes Dilone finally freed the Canadians on bail, saying there was no evidence that most of the employees and passengers even had access to the hiding spot, and no other evidence linking any of them to the drugs.
Prosecutors had made vague allegations that the plane and its occupants were a façade for a drug-smuggling scheme, according to the judge.
In August, the Canadian crew’s lawyers obtained airport security video, and discovered images of someone placing the bags into the avionics bay early in the morning before the flight was scheduled to leave, says Edmondson.
Hotel video indicated the Pivot employees were in their rooms the whole time. But police and prosecutors seemed to ignore the evidence, said the CEO.
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