A former Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agent, who told an undercover investigator that he routinely arrested Bahamian criminal defendants in South Florida and unlawfully sent them back to their homeland on commercial flights, now said he made up the story.
Retired FBI Agent Gerard Forrester, the FBI’s Miami liaison officer in the Caribbean in the 1990s, told a court in Bahamas that he lied because he has the tendency to brag.
Forrester’s admission to arresting and unlawfully repatriating suspects surfaced during an unrelated civil court battle between New York hedge fund billionaire, Louis Bacon, and Canadian fashion mogul, Peter Nygard.
According to an affidavit, Forrester is heard in an audio recording saying that a Bahamian murder suspect was arrested in Miami, held briefly in jail, placed on a plane and later killed in police custody in The Bahamas.
Forrester now works with a former Bahamian police officer who was cleared in the 1998 killing of that suspect, who the retired FBI agent said was wanted at the time on murder charges related to bank robberies.
Under US federal law, foreign nationals wanted on an arrest warrant issued in their native country have the legal right to challenge their extradition or removal in US courts.
