FYI: What are they thinking?

Winnipegger Kevin Hiebert is back in custody and back in the news.

It was about a year ago he took off from a Greek prison where he was serving a lengthy sentence for smuggling cocaine from South America to Athens. He is being held in Amsterdam as he fights extradition back to Greece.

Despite Greece's being the birthplace of democracy, a member of NATO and part of the European Union, Hiebert's supporters say his sentence was produced by a Greek justice system that is fraught with corruption on scale with a banana republic.

On the other hand, what kind of judicial generosity should a foreigner expect from a land that unwillingly, and largely thanks to geography, has become a major entry point for Colombian cocaine en route to the rest of Europe? A place where the smell of cash lures multinational criminal organizations that ensure the continued flow of cocaine?

Hiebert may have been a small fry in a big outfit, but still part of an enterprise that's all about profit with no consideration of fallout. The cocaine industry is rooted in South America, where it is run by ruthless cartels. The violent battles of business result in thousands of village children being displaced, who then become easy pickings for paramilitary forces looking for child soldiers.

The blood spills everywhere with executions and murders from Winnipeg to Timbuktu, all an integral part of the coke game.

Hiebert was arrested during a period when Greek authorities had their hands full with African syndicates that moved heroin and Colombia-based cocaine into their country.

The RCMP reported Hiebert and some of his associates, who were arrested in Amsterdam, were likely parts of an international gang, "recruited on behalf of a Nigerian drug-trafficking ring operating out of Greece."

Anyway it's sliced, people like Hiebert are key cogs in a business that is fully wicked and he was caught on a billion-dollar drug highway that stretches from Colombia to Africa, across the Mediterranean and north into Europe. As for Hiebert, he is back in custody amid reports that he was trying to effect passage back to Canada.

Recently interviewed by the CBC from his Dutch holding facility, Hiebert is demanding some kind of internal investigation into the RCMP and the various levels of government that he says duped him and landed him back into custody.

And that's fine. He can demand whatever he wants. But I do wonder where Winnipeg Liberal MP Anita Neville's head is after she wrote a letter in support of Hiebert's return to Canada.

Before we welcome him back it would be nice to know what he's been up to for the last year. Reports say the underground community supported him. What's that? I doubt there's some kind of legitimate and philanthropic Underground Railroad dedicated to helping escaped drug traffickers make their way home.

It would be interesting to know how he travelled across a half-dozen countries without documentation. And it may be coincidence, but he did end up in Amsterdam where, according to the Mounties, a number of his drug colleagues had been arrested.

Hiebert's backers suggest that if he were brought back to Canada he could be dropped into our prison system and rehabilitated. Would that be the prison system that on any other occasion is characterized as a dangerous and overcrowded criminal training ground?

In a 2008 interview with the CBC, Hiebert referred to his Greek prison as a "normal" place where one could "read books," "relax" and "do whatever we want."

Neville says it's "appalling" and "dismaying" that Canada may have played a role in the capture of this Canadian fugitive.

With so much in the "unknown" column, it is appalling to blindly advocate for the return of a self-admitted drug trafficker who's been on the lam for more than a year. Especially given that her party essentially ignored him while it held the reins of power.

Like Greece, Canadian law allows a life sentence for trafficking cocaine. It's seldom, if ever used, but our judicial largesse doesn't always wash in other parts of the world. The Greeks sent a message of denunciation and deterrence and it was strong. How many other informed Winnipeggers are likely to try the same stunt in Greece or anywhere else?

Hiebert's extradition hearings began earlier this month and continued this past week.

Robert Marshall is a security consultant and former Winnipeg police detective

rm112800@hotmail.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 28, 2009 H6