After over two months of anxiety-fuelled trauma over their fate as prisoners on United States turf, the captain and three crew members of ill-fated vessel Lady Lawla returned home yesterday, elated to find their feet firmly back on Jamaican soil for the new year.

The men touched down at Norman Manley International Airport at 12:56 pm and were in the bosom of their families by 5:00 pm after weeks of drama which had all the makings of a “diplomatic crisis”, according to their attorney Bert Samuels.

“They made it, they made it!” Samuels told the Jamaica Observer moments later.

Samuels, on Monday, created a firestorm over the continued detention by United States immigration officials of the four who were held in October on allegations that they were found with 150 gallons of liquid cocaine, but were subsequently cleared by a Florida court.

According to the attorney, the silence from Jamaica’s attorney general and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the plight of the men — who were initially detained for 73 days, between October 11, 2020 and December 23, 2020 — was “deafening”.

Yesterday Samuels, speaking to the Observer following a debriefing session with the men at his downtown Kingston office, said they had been somewhat thunderstruck on Tuesday when told they would be released.

“They were happy; they didn’t believe until yesterday (Wednesday) when they were tapped on the shoulder and told you are leaving tomorrow (Thursday), they only knew then they wouldn’t be spending the new year in a strange land,” the attorney said.

He was, in the meantime, miffed at the way the men were handled.

“They came in on a regular flight but they were treated like deportees, in that they didn’t have on their regular clothes; they had on their suits that they got from jail. All their personal belongings were taken away from them. At the time they were taken in, their passports were taken away from them, they had to come down on emergency passports. These kidnappers took away their passports and personal belongings,” Samuels said.

He said the men, though happy to be home, remain traumatised by their experience.

“All of them have their respective families and children and they were happy to greet them, but the trauma they suffered when they were told that 150 gallons of cocaine — which means they would be facing multiple decades of imprisonment — [was found on their boat] was trauma for the men and their respective families; for men who had nothing illegal on-board,” Samuels told the Observer.

“Part of the nightmare for the men is that they knew they had no drugs aboard, but they were very scared that after the boat was destroyed cocaine would have been planted on them,” he said.

In the meantime, the attorney took issue with the approach by Jamaican authorities to the issue.

“The only authority that has spoken about compensation for the boat is the US ambassador. The only State official that has recognised that there should be compensation, ironically, is the US ambassador to Jamaica.”

Samuels was referring to yesterday’s Observer lead story reporting US Ambassador Donald Tapia as saying that there are provisions for the owner of the boat to seek compensation for the vessel which was destroyed as part of a worldwide practice whenever contraband is found on a vessel at sea.

In that story, Tapia had also revealed that efforts are being made to get the men on a flight and have them home as soon as possible.

“Once we get the travel documents, the next available commercial flight they will be put on,” Tapia told Observer editors and reporters.

He also said the incident was embarrassing to the Jamaican and US governments, and to him personally.

Yesterday, Samuels said, “The deliberate destruction of any property belonging to Jamaica is a breach of our constitution. It amounts to piracy and it is malicious destruction of property, and we will be seeking compensation not just for the boat. This is a 92-foot vessel, this boat is well-equipped, it is centrally air-conditioned, and it’s a carrier.

“We are talking about loss of use between now and when we are paid for its replacement,” he said pointing out that the boat cost in excess of US$600,000.

Addressing the insistence by National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang that it was unlikely that Jamaica authorities had given the go-ahead for the US officials to destroy the boat, Samuels said, “ Lady Lawla has had a history of the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) asking the US Coast Guard to breach Jamaican law. They did it in 2009 when they invited US forces onto the vessel in Jamaican waters.

“We have a sworn affidavit from a DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent saying he got permission from the JDF, so what side do you think I am prepared to lean on? I’m leaning on the side that they did get permission,” he stated.

Added Samuels: “But interestingly, based on marine law, there should be a log of all the activities that took place on the US boat, so we are going to ask for the discovery of the logbook for the US boat that would have recorded the conversation with the JDF.

“They asked Jamaica for permission to waive rights and allow them to go aboard, so Jamaica commenced the whole thing by waiving its rights with a vessel that was just a hundred miles south of our shores. Rather than ask them to escort it into Jamaica they gave US jurisdiction over a boat that is virtually within Jamaica’s economic zone; that’s crazy.”

Samuels repeated his call for disclosure as to “what level of assistance, if any, does treaty partner, the USA, give to the Jamaica Defence Force Coast Guard which may compromise Jamaica’s ability, as a sovereign nation, to confront breaches of the treaty by the United States Coast Guard on issues such as this involving unlawful detention of our citizens and destruction of citizens’ property”.