David WarnesSummary
On this page you will find an overview of David's situation, for more detail please contact us.
- All his life David has been a keen sailor
- Earlier this year he achieved his 'yachtmaster' certificate, entitling him to skipper a yacht
- David advertised his CV on various websites, touting his new qualification (it is a great achievement)
- David was contacted by a company who had seen his CV and asked him to call someone regarding a job, which he naturally did
- David accepted a job offer to sail company yachts in the Caribbean, starting from Isla Margarita on 26th March 2007
- For the next 7 weeks David worked on several of the company yachts, preparing for their return to europe, departing on 11th May
- On 12th May at approximately 07:00, the yacht David was on departed Isla Margarita heading initially for the Azores, then on to Italy. Another yacht was scheduled to leave with them, but didn't for reasons we are not yet sure of.
- At 01:17 CET David sent a text message to his wife, Bev, saying "passing St. Lucia, love you, speak soon"
- Sometime on the 14th of May, about 90 miles out at sea, the yacht was stopped and ordered to sail to Martinique where is was searched. 104kg of cocaine was found in a sealed lifeboat container on each of the 3 yachts belonging to the same company which were being searched* and all of the crew were arrested.
- The crews were taken to Martinique, where details become sketchy but we know that they are being held in a prison in Ducos (which is southeast of the airport). All personal posessions were removed.
- The French authorities have not permitted any telephone calls, have not contacted family members or next of kin. They also failed to notify the embassy of the countries whose citizens they are detaining (although we understand that the Dutch consulate were informed).
- When we discovered that David had been imprisoned, we immediately set about notifying the relevant British Government Departments and started proceedings to get him released. So far, the authorities we have contacted have been fairly unhelpful, but we are still pushing on
- We are currently unable to provide any more details because the French authorities have deemed that no further details will be released until the trial
* 3 lots of 104kg of cocaine has a street value of between $23,400,000 and $93,600,000 depending on how and where it is sold, using prices from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine and www.bermuda.org.uk/coke.htm