SN story has several weak points

Dear Editor,

Your news item in the Wednesday, March 5 edition, ‘Freed accomplice was 13 during Lusignan massacre –sources,’ has failed to capture some angles in the saga of Dwane Williams, the youth who confessed to being present at the Lusignan, Lindo Creek and Bartica massacres.

As your seniors at the Stabroek would know, editors and journalists must take considerable time before making decisions to print what dubious, infamous or people with criminal records say to them. These people could be self-serving. You mentioned that then Police Commissioner Henry Greene had stated that the police had an eyewitness to the Lindo Creek murders and it can now be said that he was referring to Dwane Wiliams.

But was the late Mr Greene being honest? When the head of the mining camp, Leonard Arokium whose relatives were victims of the killings, wanted to meet with the press to show them using logistical maps demonstrating that the Fineman gang could not have done the killings, he requested to see me. I facilitated Stabroek News to have access to the meeting and we met at the office of the Catholic Standard editor, Colin Smith.

From the maps laid out by Mr Arokium, I was convinced that at the time the joint patrol saw the Fineman gang at the Falls to the time the murders occurred at Lindo Creek, it was not possible for the gang to have traversed such primitive, almost impassable terrain in that short space of time.

I believe most media operatives hold the view that the mayhem was done by state security either through a mistake which was then covered up or Mr Arokium’s theory that a robbery took place and dead men cannot reveal identities.

What Henry Greene did in my opinion is to claim discovery of an eyewitness to remove suspicion from the joint patrol. I need to remind media operatives that a soldier has come forward to say he knows what happened at Lindo Creek. What has happened to that soldier since remains a mystery.

Back to Greene. Was he a credible person? Just consult the American Embassy cables on him as contained in the Wikileaks release. Mr Simels, Roger Khan’s lawyer openly stated that Khan was involved in tapping Commissioner Felix’s phone and it was done through Mr Greene. Mr Greene was a facilitator of drug barons in this country according to dispatches by the US Embassy which requested that he not be made Commissioner.

Mr Greene was recommended to be charged for rape by the DPP. Surely, it is taking journalistic investigations into questionable directions to rely on the word of such a tainted citizen of this land.

The new item also mentioned that Williams was found wandering at Lindo Creek and was picked up by the joint patrol.

Any media operative who investigated the Buxton saga from 2002 to 2005 would know that makes no sense.

Small boys were part of the Buxton gang and they were cruel, indoctrinated people who acted far beyond their age. Why would Fineman’s marauders go to Lindo Creek, murder about a dozen miners and when they left, one of the boys  got lost? In that terrain, he had to be missed minutes after the gang hit the trail to their eventual exit.

And why would they leave without marshalling their troops out of Lindo Creek? Was Fineman’s cabal so incompetent? And which other young killer from the cabal was found wandering around the place after the shooting sprees? With due respect, your story has several weak points that take way from the overall integrity of the report.

Yours faithfully,

Frederick Kissoon