Explosive revelations at Simels’ trial

Jul 29, 2009 News

Witness tells of murder, drugs and complicity

From Enrico Woolford in New York

In explosive sworn testimony, a crowded US court heard a story of murder, intrigue, drugs and complicity.
A self-professed former member of the Shaheed ‘Roger’ Khan phantom gang, 34-year- old Selwyn Vaughn went into the witness stand and stated that Roger Khan ordered the killings of political activist Ronald Waddell, and boxing coach Donald Allison.
Vaughn said that he knows what happened because he was there in a Burgundy diesel Toyota AT 192 motorcar when four other named members of the squad turned up and shot Waddell.
Vaughn claimed that he was the lookout man who was tracking Waddell and that he called Roger Khan on his cell phone that night and reported that Waddell had left his residence and his car was idling on the roadway.
Within minutes, four members of the phantom squad, all former members of the Guyana Police Force, turned up and shot Waddell.

Robert Simels

The witness said that after the shooting that night, Khan and his group, including Vaughn, gathered at the Blue Iguana nightspot and from that location Khan called the Minister of Health in Guyana, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy.
According to Vaughn, Khan instructed Ramsammy to order the doctors at the Georgetown Public Hospital to let Waddell die.
Waddell, the former talk show host, according to the witness, was criticising Shaheed Roger Khan and was connected to the infamous Buxton Gang of Escapees.
Several telephone calls were played in the courtroom detailing separate conversations between the witness and former Roger Khan attorney, Robert Simels, in the US, and the witness and Glenn Hanoman, Fedroy Willabus, Conrad Sanmoogan and Colin Moore in Guyana
Vaughn, who claimed that he became a DEA informant after Khan was arrested and taken to the US in 2006, was asked specifically whether he had ever met with Dr. Ramsammy.
He said that he met Ramsammy both at Roger Khan’s Carpet Cleaning office in Bel Air Village and that he went to Dr Ramsammy’s office on behalf of Khan who introduced him to Dr Ramsammy.
Essentially the witness said that of all persons, after Khan was arrested by the US, they (the Khan Group) expected Dr. Ramsammy to help but later the President of Guyana Bharrat Jagdeo said publicly that Roger Khan must say on whose behalf he, Khan, was fighting crime.
Vaughn indicated that they got help from Ramsammy on behalf of the government. Vaughn added that Bharrat, meaning President Jagdeo, would not like Roger Khan to talk. But Roger Khan is not that type, the witness added, because all he had to do when he was held in the US was to talk about his involvement with the Guyana Government and he would have walked right out.
Speaking to the murder of Donald Allison, Vaughn said he was there, too, as the lookout when Allison was killed.
Roger Khan in this case called Selwyn Vaughn to ask for the location of Allison. When he was told about the location, members of Khan’s Phantom Squad came out and shot Allison dead.
Later, a member of the infamous squad’s daughter was kidnapped in retaliation to that killing.
Allison is the uncle of former Army officer David Clarke who was identified to testify against Khan.
Vaughn is the man who implicated the former attorney for Khan, Robert Simels, and Simels’s associate, Arienne Irving, in an obstruction of justice case that is now in the trial stage in New York.
The case has attracted widespread attention in the US Tri-State area where Simels is a prominent defence attorney.
The star witness named several Guyanese individuals who are involved in the narcotics trade between Guyana and North America and Europe.
Their photographs and phone numbers were displayed in court and in some cases telephone conversations were played.
The involvement of Khan in trying to quell and capture the five February 23 prison escapees was recalled.
The jury, now minus its sole Guyanese juror, learnt that Khan organized various houses to have money placed there to lure the escapees to those targets so they could have been eliminated.
The witness, in sworn testimony, claimed that he was asked because of a schoolmate connection to Rondell Rawlins aka Fineman, to infiltrate the Buxton group on behalf of Khan.
There were two attempts to send explosives into Buxton to blow up the gang.
Guns were brought in from Brazil though an employee of a Timber company that Khan later bought, the jury heard on the second day of the Robert Simels trial.
According to the testimony, a man targeted for extradition from Guyana, Barry Dataram, was also part of the Khan organization helping to facilitate the movement of hundreds of kilos of drugs out of Guyana.
The witness told the court that at one stage Khan said, just to run the phantom squad and pay all the members he would have to land 500 kilos per year into the US and Europe. The witness claimed that he saw cocaine at Khan’s Bel Air House and he saw Roger Khan gave one kilo of cocaine to a man named Conrad Sanmoogan.
Selwyn Vaughn, who is in protective custody and under special immunity that shields him from later prosecution in the United States, spent the entire day on the stand.
The trial continues today.