Protection not being considered for witnesses appearing in Linden shooting inquiry

The issue of protection for the witnesses in the July 18 shootings in Linden is not something that is being considered in the setting up of the Commission of Inquiry (COI) as no one has come forward expressing  any fear, a government source said yesterday.

Persons in various quarters had expressed the view that some sort of system should be set up to protect witnesses, but according to the government source at the moment this is not an issue being looked it.

“This issue was never raised by any of the parties during talks and it is not something to be considered because we don’t know of anyone who has expressed any fear,” Stabroek News was told.

Meanwhile the source said that the five member team sitting on the COI will begin its work during the second week of September. It was explained that quite a few issues are being worked out to ensure that all the commissioners are available from that date until the end of the COI which is expected to last between six to eight weeks.

Last week Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon confirmed that retired Chief Justice of Jamaica, Lensley Wolfe; Jamaican Senator and Senior Counsel, K D Knight;  former Trinidad senator and Senior Counsel Dana Seetahal; former Chancellor of the Judiciary, Cecil Kennard and former Justice of Appeal, Claudette Singh will sit on the commission.

The government source said that some of those who will sit on the commission have busy job schedules and those will have to be straightened out before the COI begins.

The source in responding to public statements that the COI was taking too long to start said that three of the commissioners are foreign based – a component that the opposition insisted on having and as such it would only be fair to give those persons time to adjust their schedules to travel to Guyana.

The source insisted that the government was always prepared to start the COI even without the inclusion of the foreign component.

Meanwhile AFC leader Khemraj Ramjattan told Stabroek News yesterday that the issue of witness protection was never discussed and in his mind people need not to be fearful of giving evidence against the police.

He said to be fearful will make a mockery of the entire process, noting that it would be outrageous to make such a demand at this stage. “If the witnesses saw the police shooting then one would expect that they would come forward and say so. They must be fearless otherwise everyone will ask for witness protection,” he said.

While stressing that he played no major role in the talks about the COI, Ramjattan said that a lot of administrative arrangements are still being made. This includes accommodation for the foreign based commissioners while they are in Guyana, remuneration and their respective diets.

“A thousand things still have to go on before this starts. There is still a lot of work to be done,” he said.

Asked where the commissioners will conduct their interviews, Ramjattan said that this was not announced but from all indications it will be at Watooka House.

Lindeners on July 18 began what was supposed to have been a five-day protest over government’s proposed electricity tariff increase. As night stepped in on that first day, police opened fire near the Wismar-Mackenzie Bridge. Ron Somerset, 18; Shemroy Bouyea and Allan Lewis, 46 were killed during the incident and at least 20 others were wounded.

It was following this that the President Donald Ramotar announced that a COI would be established to investigate the incident. Subsequently Luncheon and APNU MP Joseph Harmon were tasked with formulating the Terms of Reference (TOR) for the COI and were given up to August 2, to do so.

On that day, there was a parliamentary sitting and the forum was used to announce the TOR, which were not well received by the AFC, which said that it was not a party to the agreement.

Later the talks were reopened to accommodate AFC’s input. Region Ten also objected to one of the terms.

The new TORs were completed last Tuesday.

The COI will be based in the city and as needs be the commissioners will travel to Linden where all the necessary resources will be made available to them.

The Region Ten administration in particular has been lobbying for the commissioners to sit in Linden. Following the announcement that this will not happen, Regional Chairman Sharma Solomon said that he will continue to insist that it sits in the mining town.