Canada air crew caught up in ‘hellish’ Dominican Republic drugs bust begs for repatriation

A five-person Canadian airline crew caught up in a drug-trafficking investigation is begging their government to repatriate them after two months trapped in the Dominican Republic. “It’s absolutely horrendous – terrible, terrible stuff we’re going through,” said captain Robert Di Venanzo, who said he and his crew could be held for up to a year while an investigation proceeds. The episode began on 5 April, when the small charter plane belonging to Pivot Airlines was preparing to return to Toronto Pearson airport from Punta Cana. While doing his final pre-flight checks, maintenance engineer Bal Krishna Dubey found some black duffel bags in the maintenance bay – a part of the aircraft that would normally never hold luggage. The crew reported the unopened bags to Canada’s RCMP as well as local authorities. A pair of Dominican police officers approached with sniffer dogs. When they unzipped the bags, smaller packages of a white substance wrapped in plastic fell out. In all, the eight bags contained 200kg of cocaine, later valued at around $25m. The crew looked on in confusion as the officers posed for photos for a press release, and Di Venanzo initially thought the officers would thank them for reporting the bags. Instead, they threw them in jail. Story has more.<br/>