TAMPA, USA — Previously sealed video evidence that shows Grammy Award winning reggae artist, Buju Banton, whose real name is Mark Anthony Myrie, involved in a drug operation turned undercover sting, has been obtained and released by ABC News just months before his scheduled release from the McRae Correctional Institution, Georgia, in December of this year.
The video shows Myrie, along with three other men at a warehouse in Sarasota, Florida, examining a packet, which was said to be cocaine, bound for an unidentified man in Georgia.
Fans of Myrie, who has had no prior drug arrests, claim that the arrest was entrapment and that he should be freed from prison and fully exonerated.
Without question, court testimony shows that Myrie was indeed courted by drug informant, Alex Johnson, over the course of several months, to the point of harassment of Myrie who he desperately wanted to make a significant drug deal after their chance encounter on that flight from Madrid back in 2009.
As a result of the sting, Myrie was arrested in December 2009 and booked in the Pinellas County jail on conspiracy to distribute and possession of more than five kilograms of cocaine. He was also charged with a count of possession of a firearm with the intent to use in the trafficking of distribution of cocaine.
The first trial ended up in a mistrial in February 2010 due to the failure of jury to reach a unanimous verdict.
During a retrial in February 2011, Myrie was found guilty of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five or more kilograms of cocaine, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking offence and sentenced to ten years and one month in US federal prison.
Myrie, while not having any prior drug arrests or convictions, has had a controversial career since he first broke on to the music scene.
When he was 15, his chart-topping 1992 song, “Boom Bye Bye”, sent shockwaves through the ever increasingly empowered gay and lesbian community years later, as they realized that the song advocated for the shooting and murdering of gay and lesbian people.
The confirmed release date for Myrie is December 8, 2018, after eight years of his original ten-year sentence in 2011.
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