Two years af­ter serv­ing a jail sen­tence for co­caine pos­ses­sion, Eng­lish­man Shawn Grif­fith is anx­ious to re­turn home to his fam­i­ly. How­ev­er, his trav­el doc­u­ments are still in the hands of Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials and are yet to be hand­ed over to the British High Com­mis­sion, which is try­ing to help Grif­fith leave T&T by this week­end.

Grif­fith, 32 of Croy­don, Eng­land, is be­ing held at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre, East­ern Main Road, Aripo, Ari­ma. He re­port­ed­ly suf­fers from a rare blood dis­ease and was re­leased from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, Arou­ca on Oc­to­ber 16, 2012. He was ar­rest­ed at Pi­ar­co Air­port on March 10, 2011, as he tried to leave the coun­try af­ter a two-week va­ca­tion.

Dur­ing a body-scan up­on his de­par­ture, of­fi­cers ob­served a pack­et con­tain­ing co­caine in his stom­ach. Grif­fith was ar­rest­ed and tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and kept un­der po­lice guard. How­ev­er, he es­caped cus­tody that very night and re­mained on the run for four days.

Fol­low­ing his re­cap­ture, Grif­fith ap­peared in court charged with pos­ses­sion of 200 grammes of co­caine for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing, lar­ce­ny of a pair of hand­cuffs and as­sault­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer. Con­vict­ed on Ju­ly 17, 2011, for drug traf­fick­ing, Grif­fith was or­dered to serve 24 months whilst the oth­er two charges re­mained pend­ing.

The tri­al re­lat­ing to the pend­ing charges was set to take place on Wednes­day be­fore Mag­is­trate An­drew Stroude in the Tu­na­puna Third Court, but the charges were dis­missed af­ter both com­plainant and vic­tim failed to ap­pear. Grif­fith was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Fa­reed Ali. Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian on Thurs­day, Ali con­firmed that of­fi­cials at the British High Com­mis­sion had in­ter­vened and are ea­ger to en­sure Grif­fith re­turns to Eng­land.

How­ev­er, he said while they await the re­turn of the trav­el doc­u­ments Grif­fith re­mains at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre. Grif­fith is now con­sid­ered an il­le­gal en­trant which is why he re­mains in de­ten­tion. Ali said Grif­fith is con­trite and anx­ious to re­turn home.