After spending three days in police custody, the eight Guyana Defence Force soldiers fingered in the theft of a single AK-47 rifle, yesterday returned to Base Camp Ayanganna.
The police and the army have not made much progress in recovering the weapon. Police had grilled the suspects at different police station lock-ups, but from all indications detectives did not glean much from them.
Army sources told Stabroek News yesterday that the search was still ongoing at Ayanganna.
Coming one year after 30 AK-47s were spirited out of the military storage bond at the same location, Commander-in-Chief, President Bharrat Jagdeo said that the loss was unacceptable and warned that several people who were responsible for the weapon and should have known about it would face tough sanctions.
The army announced on Sunday that it had removed three senior officers from their posts and another eight soldiers had been remanded to police custody following the disappearance of the rifle. A senior officer of the military yesterday questioned the move by the GDF to remand the eight soldiers while only interdicting the Base Com-mander, Adjutant and the Base Sergeant Major.
The army had said that in addition, several others who worked as duty officers and orderly officers were to face serious disciplinary action immediately for failing to supervise the base security personnel during their tour of duty over the period that the weapon went missing.
The loss of the AK-47 is seen as a major embarrassment to the new army high command coming in the wake of the disappearance of 30 of these weapons the previous year, which caused a shake-up in the GDF hierarchy.
Jagdeo told the media on Monday that he was informed that the weapon went missing two Mondays ago, but it was not discovered until later. He added that the GDF administration, which he installed in October, was working aggressively to recover it. “It seems as though there was a breakdown in check and handover systems
