Dear Editor,
One would think the PNC diehards would just give up rather than defy logic and common sense. Every time they open their mouths and launch their ludicrous defences on the Walter Rodney assassination, they are undermining the gains the PNC made in May 2015. Hamilton Green’s letter fits the bill perfectly (‘Rodney’s death was a terrible accident’, SN, March 10). Mr Green questioned, “Did any of them help to tell us what sort of device Walter Rodney had? From the beginning, we heard it was a walkie-talkie, but walkie-talkies don’t explode. Did the commission seek to find out who ordered this device or walkie-talkie? And more importantly, what caused the explosion or detonation of this device?” Mr Green should drop the simplistic nonsense and face the facts that paint a picture of outright murder on the part of the PNC. A walkie-talkie or any device with a bomb inside would explode. A bomb will explode if triggered. Gregory Smith admitted in his book a bomb could be triggered in a walkie-talkie using its channels. Gregory Smith, existing member of the GDF Badge No 4141 and Rodney’s assassin, was secreted away by the GDF to Kwakwani and then smuggled to French Guiana within days of Rodney’s death. And to think that Mr Green has the temerity to contend there was an ‘accident’ after this act of ferrying the prime accused to safety from prosecution.
Walter’s brother, Donald Rodney, sitting one foot away from him had only minor injuries. The bomb exploded upwards, not outwards. The car roof was damaged. The bomb’s small blast force and upward not outward projection means it could have barely dented the Georgetown prison’s metal fence and done nothing to the inner buffer fence. This was a bomb made to kill a human being looking at it or peering into it, not blow up a metal fence. Gregory Smith did tell Rodney to peer into the walkie-talkie. Further, the prison goes into standard lockdown at night and there is no reason to bomb a prison in lockdown. The PNC never released the reports of the British bomb expert, Dr. Frank Skuse. Dr Skuse was later disgraced in the UK over misrepresenting the evidence in the case of alleged Irish bombers. If Mr Green and the PNC peddle a case of accident, then they must accept that Dr Rodney had knowledge of the bomb. But no rational human being who was on heightened alert (he took his brother and not the WPA leaders when there was fear the WPA was infiltrated) who had lost two of his lieutenants, knowingly tests a live bomb that could be remotely triggered in the enclosed space of a car and in the company of his beloved brother.
Smith’s girlfriend gained employment within the Guyana Embassy in Canada shortly after Rodney’s death. For a man accused of burning down a massive government building, it is certainly farcical that those same accusers claimed he was trying to bomb the wall of the prison with a minuscule bomb concealed in a walkie-talkie device.
What does Rodney’s state of mind have to do with the fact that he was bombed to death? The man was in resistance mode to a dictatorship in which Mr Green played a major role. So what if he infiltrated the security forces? Isn’t that even greater reason for the rulers of the day to kill him? Even if “Dr Walter Rodney opted to reach the plateau of political power by violent means”, his murder is not excusable or morally acceptable. It is the most heinous of crimes. Hamilton Green says the PPP failed to mount inquiries into the killings of hundreds of young Guyanese including Ronald Waddell. How is Ronald Waddell any different from Walter Rodney? In light of Mr Green’s musings, why should the PPP see Waddell any differently from how the PNC still views Rodney
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
