The story had all the ingredients of a great murder mystery − affidavits; bribery; confessions; death squads; executions; a foreign embassy; illegal guns; hit lists; mobile telephone records; political parties; rogue policemen; torture chambers; video tapes and more. But George ‘Bumbalay’ Bacchus, the man who knew it all, perhaps, knew too much. He was murdered on June 24, 2004, after he started to talk publicly about this country’s criminal underworld.
If anything could have explained the bloody troubles on the East Coast and elsewhere that began at Mashramani 2002 it was the trial of Delon ‘Fatboy’ Reynolds for the murder of George Bacchus which ended last week. Eighteen years old at the time of the crime, Reynolds gave the police a statement to the effect that a woman offered him $200,000 to kill George Bacchus. He never denied that he deliberately killed Bacchus. He was convicted for manslaughter and, now that the trial is over, it seems that some might have gotten away with murder.
The police force’s criminal investigation department accumulated credible evidence of the crime. Detective Charles Alleyne read the statement in which Reynolds confessed to climbing through a window to Bacchus’s room and shooting him three times. Detective Sergeant Cedric Gravesande testified that he found Bacchus’s body oozing blood from three wounds. Constable Michael Phillips deposed that Reynolds showed him where the murder weapon was hidden and told him, “this is the gun I used to kill George Bacchus.” Sergeant Orin Cameron attested that Reynolds told him that he wanted to tell the truth after which the statement, which still stands, was taken. Clearly, this was a cut-and-dried case of murder.
George Bacchus knew that he was marked for death when, on January 5, 2004, his brother Shafeek Bacchus was mistakenly shot dead. Without witness protection, he sought safety in publicity. He confessed to being an informant for a death squad which carried out ‘numerous’ extra-judicial executions during the troubles; that a certain senior administration official was involved in directing the squad; that the squad had ties to businessmen who funded its grisly activities; and that members of the police force were involved in the murders. He also identified a building where the death squad’s victims were tortured and disclosed the locations and described the manner of disposal of the victims’ bodies.
Bacchus’s allegations started a political storm that culminated in President Bharrat Jagdeo’s appointment of a presidential commission of inquiry in May 2004 to determine whether “the Minister of Home Affairs, Mr Ronald Gajraj, has been involved in promoting, directing or otherwise engaging in activities which have involved the extra-judicial killing of persons”; the commission cleared him. The commission’s report turned out to be quite useless largely because, expectedly, George Bacchus’s exemplary execution encouraged witnesses to stay away.
Only by convicting and punishing persons who are guilty of felonies and by protecting the innocent can this country’s criminal justice system improve public safety and increase public confidence in its fairness and effectiveness. The question might well be asked, therefore, whether last week’s sentencing of the self-confessed murderer Delon Reynolds to ten years in prison for killing a self-confessed death squad informant George Bacchus for manslaughter has made society safer?
Ordinary persons who thought that they understood the difference between the crimes of murder and manslaughter might be perplexed at the outcome of Reynolds’s trial. They might also wonder how the persons who recruited the culprit and provided the murder weapon did so with impunity. Worse, they might be frightened by the fact that the death squad organisation is still intact and, so far, has gotten away with murder.
