"Who teef Budna?" - it's a question that continues to perplex the population - and it's not clear if we will ever get the true answer to it. We do know that police are involved, but we still can't say who gave the order, and who paid to have it done.
But, what really happens when the state abducts a citizen and delivers him to a foreign country? Well, there's a good example in recent history. Enrique George Herbert - formerly the reputed boss of the George Street Gang - was handed over to the DEA in 2003 without any kind of due process. He served 21 years in jail and was deported back to Belize last year. Well, tonight he has taken out a lawsuit against the government of Belize for breach of his constitutional rights. Jules Vasquez looks at the court documents which were filed against the government yesterday.
This is the diplomatic note which the United States sent to the Belize Ministry of Foreign Affairs on April 14, 2003, requesting the provisional arrest and extradition of George Herbert for drug smuggling. He was indicted for two counts: conspiracy to import Cocaine to the United States and the conspiracy to distribute the same.
Herbert was then detained by Belize police 11 days later on the early morning of April 25th - then Commissioner Carmen Zetina said in an affidavit that it was in relation to a surge in gang and gun violence.
Herbert was held at the Queen Street station. Zetina stated in that same affidavit that on Friday evening, a DEA agent named Vince Williams told him that Herbert and another indicted suspect Liston McCord had agreed to voluntarily travel to the United States to face charges.
In his affidavit Herbert says that a group of armed police officers led by then Inspector Chester Williams put him and McCord into a mobile and took them to the airport, where a jet was waiting. He said he could see Belize senior police officers shaking hands with the DEA agents as they were loaded into the jet.
He said one of the agents then came up to him and said they were now in his custody.
In his 2025 affidavit, here's how he puts it:
"I protested that he had no right to do that and that he was kidnapping me without access to a lawyer or court to challenge the legality of these actions. The agent said that it was all legal because "your government gave you to us". The agent then forced me onto the plane, which took off at once."
After that he was taken to the US, convicted of 11 counts and sentenced to 33 years in prison. He got an early release after 21 years - and in an affidavit characterizes this years as "extremely hard…. the prisons I was in were dangerous places with violent inmates. Authorities had to transfer me from a couple of prisons because of threats to my life from other prisoners."
In this suit Herbert is now seeking damages from the government because in late 2004, the Supreme Court found that the government violated his constitutional rights when it forcibly sent him to the US without any due process. The court also ordered the state to bring Herbert back to Belize, plus hold an inquiry to determine who allowed his kidnapping. The court awarded him 35 thousand dollars in damages. The then Musa administration did none of those things.
So in this new filing, he says, quote, "up to now, 22 years later, GOB has not paid me the damages, interest, and costs that the Chief Justice awarded me...
Second, GOB never executed the Chief Justice's Order to take steps to return me to Belize."
Herbert also argues because the state kidnapped him, he ended up serving many more years in prison. His affidavit says, quote, "If GOB had instead followed the law and had properly extradited me to the US, the authorities there would only have been able to try me for the two charges under the extradition request... GOB's illegal rendition thus caused my trial on 11 charges rather than 2."
Herbert is now seeking damages and vindicatory damages from the government for the violation of his constitutional rights which led to quote, "my unlawful US incarceration for 21 years and three months."
And just as he did in 2004, in 2025, his attorney is Dean Barrow.
Herbert is represented by Barrow, Agassi Finnegan and Ben Cooper, a King's counsel from the UK.
