Another woman claims she was stripped and searched at airport

Another woman is planning to sue the authorities after she said she was forced to strip naked and squat at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport.

The woman has identified herself as 40-year-old Malika Cole. She is a Guyanese but currently resides in Trinidad.

The incident occurred on April 2, 2019. She said she was subjected to the search by a female officer of the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) in the presence of another female officer.

“She told me I have to strip and squat and do everything that she told me to do and that was it. I squat, open my legs, push back my back and skin up my bamzee [buttocks] in the air …about two or three times,” the woman told the News Room from her home in Trinidad.

Cole said she was then told to cough multiple times and the officer also ordered her to open her mouth for her to examine it.

She was an outgoing passenger on a Caribbean Airlines flight.

“She ain’t find nothing, you know. Nothing she ain’t find!”

Next, Cole said she was told to sign a book and she went ahead and signed it without even reading what she had signed.

She said she was too embarrassed and shocked at what was happening as she just wanted the entire episode to end.

“I was just blank because I never experienced something like this,” she stated.

It was only when she got to Trinidad that she related to her family what had happened.

It was only when she saw a News Room report of Ayana Adams, the U.S. based Guyanese woman who Monday said she planned to sue the Government and CANU, that she decided to come forward with her story.

Adams’ attorney Siand Dhurjon said CANU does not have the power to require such a search.

“For them to actually require a strip search, or a cavity search, or for them to require someone submit to ultrasound or an x-ray, (they) you need specific sanction for that.

“And what that simply means is there must be an act of Parliament or a section in the law books that authorises them to say under (what) conditions the Police or CANU can do this,” Dhurjon stated.