Dear Editor,
Your February 28 news article, ‘Sash Sawh relative thinks Roger Khan has answers on murder,’ probably took many readers by complete surprise given that many had literally forgotten the most prominent of all the unsolved murders during the Jagdeo presidency: the Sawh murders.
And like the brave relative, most of us who suspected a phantom link also noted Roger Khan’s failed bid to obtain a government approved forestry concession, even though the government never hinted at a possible motive but kept giving the impression that deranged and dangerous criminals killed the Minister. With the police never being able to establish a motive, the President’s promise to seek foreign assistance in the matter was all the nation had left to rely on in helping solve the murder of a Minister who previously maintained a rather conspicuously-low profile.
Oddly enough, this was not the only major criminal incident in which the President seemed to talk glibly about in seeking foreign assistance to try and solve. Editor, can you say what the status of government’s effort is in getting foreign assistance in solving the Health Ministry inferno? Also, what the status of government effort is in getting the US authorities to help track down some foreign mastermind in America of whom the government said it had phone records showing he made calls to Guyana on or around the times of the alleged criminal attacks/incidents in Guyana? Seems to me like Guyana’s criminal masterminds are all in the United States.
Further, in relation to Khan, the President did promise to have his police force seek assistance from the US authorities to obtain information on Khan after his New York trial in order to jump start investigations into Khan’s activities in Guyana. Well, Khan was sentenced several months ago, but we have not yet heard of any contact by the Guyana police have made with US authorities in an effort to either get copies of court transcripts from the Robert Simels trial or to even talk with Khan, David Clarke or Selwyn Vaughn. I doubt the US authorities will allow outside contact with Khan, Clarke and Vaughn, but will concede if Guyanese officials genuinely seek information from the three on certain incidents in Guyana. After all, it is not just Sawh’s relative who seeks closure, so do many surviving relatives of persons extra-judicially killed when Khan was in Guyana.
Maybe Sawh’s relative is also right, that there is a deliberate cover-up of the murders, especially since he believes that the actual triggermen, whom many suspect of being deliberately killed by the Joint Services, were not the actual masterminds. But while in a court of public opinion it is easier to say there was a cover-up, it is much harder in a court of law to prove there was a cover-up, and so Sawh’s relative should resort to enquiring of the US authorities if it is possible to talk (through an attorney) directly with Khan or even Clarke and Vaughn, to determine if any of them knew or heard anything about the Sawh murders while they were in Guyana, and take it from there. The US authorities may be inclined to cooperate even here, given that the Minister’s relative is seeking justice and won’t find it easily in Guyana unless he is armed with powerful, damning evidence.
But of the three men with potentially damaging information, Vaughn seems to be the best bet for giving it up. He said, in shocking testimony in the Simels trial in New York, he sat in a burgundy AT 192 car across the street from the home of former TV talk show host Ronald Waddell, when four other members of the squad turned up, and armed with powerful AK47s, opened fire on an unarmed and unsuspecting Waddell, who fell dead. And since, by his own testimony, Vaughn was a cohort of Khan, he may have valuable direct or indirect information/knowledge about other people killed on Khan’s instructions, and this may lead to justice and closure for Sawh’s relative as well as other surviving relatives who have hit a dead end with the police and government in Guyana.
Meanwhile, the Waddell and Sawh murders do bear a remarkable similarity in that the gunmen in both instances were armed with high-powered rifles and they went after unarmed and unsuspecting targets: one a minister, the other a govermment critic and former TV talk show host. In Waddell’s case, Vaughn said after they met Khan in a nightclub and told him Waddell was killed, Khan used his phone to make a call to Minister Ramsammy. In Sawh’s case, Khan’s application for the forestry concession, which many believe was likely to be a front for plane drops of cocaine, was blocked by Sawh, then Forestry Minister.
No one knows for sure, but speculation was rife at one point that the Waddell murder in January, 2006, was the classic set-up for the ultimate killing: the Sawh murder in April, 2006. And the hail of gunfire that greeted both unarmed victims is what also made some make a connection that the manner of deaths was eerily similar and may have had the same mastermind.
Those possible similarities and connections aside, the lawsuit by Sawh’s relative against the government for its failure to provide adequate protection for the minister might be considered by a court of law if only it can be proven that other government ministers had armed police officers, instead of armed private security officers, guarding their homes. Otherwise, it would make greater sense expending time, energy and money learning for sure who the mastermind was behind the Sawh murders by trying to talk with Khan, Clarke and Vaughn.
While it may seem strange to some that Clarke’s name is being mentioned as a possible source of information relative to Khan’s doings in Guyana, let us remember that when he was sentenced to time served, the judge said something that judges in drug smuggling trials don’t normally do. The judge told Clarke that if he were to write a book that he (the judge) would like to read that book. That remark alone should tell us that Clarke, though he is now a ‘special guest’ of the US government, might know a lot about Khan’s doings, including any possible link to the Sawh murders.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
