Ja: The dons have MPs in their gunsights

THE government announced yesterday that a number of parliamentarians and other professionals have been warned by the police that they may be under death threat from drug 'dons'.

There were immediate rumours tourism minister and South West St Ann representative Aloun Assamba was among the first persons around whom security has been stepped up, but information minister Burchell Whiteman stopped just short of confirming this.

"That may well be so. I won't go any further than that," he said.

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Whiteman declined to name names.
Assamba's constituency, in the hilly regions of northern Jamaica, is an area believed to be one where several top drug dealers live. In one St Ann community recently, residents demonstrated when the police arrested alleged drug kingpin, Norris "Dedo" Nembhard.

The complaint was that Nembhard, who runs a haulage and heavy equipment business, provided jobs in the community and that these would dry up with his arrest.

Whiteman had earlier told reporters that senior police officers had briefed the Cabinet about the dangers in the face of the recent string of arrests of alleged top-level drug dealers, most of whom the Americans want to have extradited to stand trial in the United States.