SECURITY WILL be on maximum alert at Zurich airport when a bizarre delegation descends for talks with Fifa bosses this month. The Federal police will assiduously search the baggage of former jailbird Patrick John, the man Jack Warner remains determined to impose on football in the Caribbean island of Dominica and check the criminal records of his entourage - just in case.

Last time John attempted a coup in Dominica he enlisted some odd allies. He'd been ousted from the prime minister's residence in 1979, branded "corrupt and tyrannical" and accused by the BBC of secretly planning to bust oil sanctions on South Africa.

Look up John in America's news archives and what do you find clustered around his name? Mentions of brothels, drug-runners, arms dealers, white supremacists - and the gallows.

FBI agents told a court in New Orleans in 1981 that the heavily-armed Ku Klux Klansmen clutching an authentic Nazi swastika flag that they'd arrested on a marina were about to sail for Dominica to oust the recently-elected government and restore John to power.

Money for the jaunt was provided by "Chuckles" Yanover, a Mob enforcer keen to set up a "free port" with unregulated gambling. Chuckles and his pals called their enterprise Operation Red Dog. Once they were trucked off to prison, the Louisiana Feds renamed it "Bayou of Pigs".

Ex-premier John didn't fare much better in Dominica. After an abortive coup left a policeman dead, he was jailed for 12 years. The judge said John was prepared to sell Dominica to foreigners "to satisfy his lust for power". The army chief who backed him was hanged.

In 1990 John was released. Two years later he took over local football and his climb back to power was paralleled by Warner's rise in Caribbean football politics. After John was ousted from Dominican football in 2006, Warner elevated his ally to football's regional Hall of Fame.

It's been a rocky ride for the man who replaced him.

The association has been disrupted, president Dexter Francis told me, "by a faction of Warner loyalists, led by Patrick John, constantly making allegations". Meetings were ambushed with procedural wrangling and that meant Francis couldn't manage the association - so Warner had to intervene. He flew in from Trinidad three weeks ago on a few hours' notice and ousted Francis, unilaterally imposing a junta of his choosing.

Warner's parting words were definitive. "This proposal I am sending to Fifa tonight will be accepted. It will be accepted."

It wasn't. England's Geoff Thompson, chair of Fifa's Associations Committee, ignored Warner's appointees and announced he "fully recognises the democratically and rightfully elected president Mr Dexter Francis and his board as being in charge of the DFA".

But new general secretary, Jerome Valcke, (the same Valcke who Fifa president Sepp Blatter accused back in 2001 of trying to "blackmail certain gentlemen of Fifa") isn't likely to stand up to Warner.

It doesn't matter to Valcke that Warner rigs Fifa congress elections, ripped off his national squad when they returned from the World Cup and was damned by Fifa's former Ethics Committee for his trading in World Cup tickets. That committee was disbanded and replaced by Lord Coe and his nearly all-new ethics committee. He's received a complaint from Dominican football about Warner's antics - but has so far remained silent.

Valcke has invited the legitimate president Francis and the discredited John to Zurich before the end of the month for a chat. John is said to be a "representative" of something. But of what? The Klan? If Francis doesn't concede something to former felon John, Dominica is still under the threat of being suspended from Fifa.

Valcke has given the green light to Warner to continue sabotaging Dominica until the country bows and gives power to John. Warner, after being snubbed by Thompson, had been expected to continue his campaign against England staging the 2018 World Cup so what can we make of this week's remarks backing England's bid? What will be Warner's price to change his mind?