The captain of a twin-engine 30-foot speedboat that capsized in the waters off New Providence in the Bahamas on Sunday while ferrying Haitian migrants to Miami had been previously convicted of human smuggling in the U.S. and drug trafficking in Cuba, the head of Bahamian police said Wednesday.
Speaking at a news conference in Nassau, Bahamian Police Commissioner Clayton Fernander said that authorities had finished a background check on the man, whom he did not name. The man, he said, spent two years in prison in the United States and eight years imprisoned in Cuba.
The Miami Herald has confirmed that the man was still on probation after being convicted of human smuggling in 2019 in federal court in West Palm Beach, Florida.
