A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) will press for an enquiry into the spate of murders and other criminal activities between 2002 and 2008 and its leader David Granger says the investigation should be about “more than just Roger Khan.”
In an invited comment to the Sunday Stabroek, Opposition Leader Granger said APNU would press for an independent enquiry during its consultations with the government. He was asked whether the Roger Khan issue would be raised given the new dispensation in Parliament where the joint opposition has the majority of seats.
The Bharrat Jagdeo administration had repeatedly refused to have any form of investigation into the illegal enterprise of Roger Khan even though he pleaded guilty to drug trafficking in the US, where he is now serving a 15-year jail sentence. Khan was reputedly the leader of a murderous band of men known as the ‘Phantom Squad’, reportedly responsible for the deaths of many Guyanese between 2002 and 2006, when he was arrested. While the police had announced that they were going to conduct investigations following some explosive revelations in the US courts, these never took place, because the call for persons to give statements to the police was never heeded.
Granger said the enquiry must include the complicity of members of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) and the government in “those atrocities” that took place between 2002 and 2008. He said the enquiry should also determine who was killed and look at compensation for the relatives of those killed.
“The enquiry must look at reforming the security sector to prevent such a recurrence,” the APNU leader said.
Such an enquiry, he said, must be an independent judicial enquiry conducted by persons not affiliated to any political party. Questioned whether the persons conducting the inquiry should come from outside Guyana because of the country’s polarised society, Granger said he did not agree.
“I believe there are people of integrity in Guyana who can conduct such an enquiry,” he said.
APNU would call for the enquiry to include the period of the prison escape in 2002, which triggered one of the worst crime sprees in Guyana, right up to the killing of Rondell ‘Fineman’ Rawlins towards the end of August 2008. Granger said the enquiry should also cover the theft of the 30 AK-47s from the Guyana Defence Force, the Lusignan, Bartica and Lindo Creek massacres, the killing of Agriculture Minister Satyadeow Shaw and his relatives, the Nathoo Bar killings and all the other killings during that period.
Asked whether APNU was uncomfortable with President Donald Ramotar retaining Dr Leslie Ramsammy in his cabinet when, according to evidence in the US courts, the minister has been accused of facilitating Khan’s acquisition of spy equipment, Granger said they would rely on the evidence that comes out of the local enquiry.
“We also intend to ask for a criminal enquiry into the December 6 [2011] shooting,” Granger told the Sunday Stabroek. On that day the police had opened fire with rubber bullets on a group of APNU peaceful protesters, wounding attorney-at-law James Bond and former army head Edward Collins, among others.
There have been repeated claims that Khan had close ties with the government. In 2006, after police issued an arrest warrant for him, Khan had publicly said in an advertisement that he was fighting criminals on behalf of the government. When Khan pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, Jagdeo had said he must “face the music” and later as evidence was led in the US during the Robert Simels trial, the former president had challenged Khan to “speak what he knows.”
Following Khan’s capture, US Ambassador Roland Bullen had told Washington that Khan had been protected by senior government officials and he also said that persons had related to the embassy that they had seen Khan leaving the Office of the President.
Bullen was asked to respond to a series of questions by Washington including the “Is there evidence, beyond possible conjecture, that Khan enjoys some level of political protection from senior officials of the Guyanese Government and, if so, from whom?
Bullen responded in a cable classified as secret but which was revealed by the Wiki Leaks website that: “Khan did enjoy political protection from GoG officials at the highest levels.” He cited two officials.
One official, he said, had orchestrated Guyana’s death squads in 2002-3 and the other had intervened and ordered the authorities to release Khan and return the spy equipment he had been captured with in 2002. He then said that eyewitnesses had said they had seen Khan leaving the Office of the President.
Bullen had said that in private conversations PPP insiders had revealed “their paranoia about the security forces’ connections to the political opposition… In this environment, Khan finds an Indo-Guyanese audience willing to believe that he is their protector.”
Attempts by the Sunday Stabroek to get comment from Alliance for Change (AFC) co-leader Khemraj Ramjattan proved to be futile.
However, in 2008 the AFC had issued a call to the United Nations to set up a commission of enquiry to investigate claims that Khan might have had a role in the killing of over 200 Guyanese during the 2002-04 crime wave here.
The party, in a release, had said it would have written to the UN and called on it to immediately convene a commission of enquiry into the activities of Khan and persons associated with him. “It is no use asking the government itself to conduct such an investigation because we already know that our request will be met with a strong refusal,” the opposition party had said.
The US government had contended recently in court documents that Khan, in addition to ordering the execution of cyclist, Davendra Persaud and boxing coach, Donald Allison, operated a killing squad believed to be responsible for the murder of over 200 Guyanese. The US had wanted testimony relating to these killings to be accepted in Khan’s trial as part of a charge accusing him of heading a continuing criminal enterprise. Khan had denied killing Persaud and Allison, but maintained that he assisted the Bharrat Jagdeo administration’s fight against crime during the 2002-04 crime wave.
