Convict Robert Allan Gates yesterday testified that during the latter part of 1980 he was locked up for 30 days by police after being accused of working with the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as well as being sympathetic towards the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) and it was only after the intervention of Hamilton Green that was he released.
Resuming his testimony before the Commission of Inquiry into the death of historian and WPA co-leader Dr Walter Rodney, Gates said his release came about a half an hour after Green, then the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of Housing and Planning, made a telephone call to an unknown person.
Green, in an invited comment, told Stabroek News yesterday that he couldn’t remember the episode. He recalled that when he was a minister of the government people would regularly visit him with complaints of injustice meted out to them by the police. He said that in each case he would investigate and if he found that there was indeed an injustice, he would ask senior officers to
