Friend had premonition of Walter Rodney’s death

Rev. Reuben Gilbert

-says PNC youth arm plotted to kill him

Rev. Reuben Gilbert, a close friend of Dr. Walter Rodney, yesterday testified that he had a premonition that the political activist would be assassinated just days before he died in 1980 and that an attempt was made on his own life by the youth arm of the then governing party.

“Three days before he died I had a feeling. I don’t know… it was not something you can explain and a lot of people don’t believe that there are spiritual forces in the world and you can’t convince them but I had this intuition… a terrible, uncomfortable feeling…” Gilbert, 78, testified when public hearings hosted by the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into Rodney’s death continued yesterday at the Supreme Court Law Library.

Rodney, who was the co-leader of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) and an activist who had openly opposed the PNC government at that time, was killed in a car near John and Bent streets on