COI hears…Top Cop, Laurie Lewis issued Gregory Smith’s passport in 1999

Mar 28, 2015 News

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Amid suggestions that lone suspect and former Sergeant of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), Gregory Smith,

was a member of an intelligence unit, it was revealed that a passport issued to him in 1999 was done as ordered by former Top Cop, Laurie Lewis.
This disclosure came from Sergeant Alexis Adams, the Immigration Officer in charge of the Records Section, yesterday.
Shortly after Rodney was killed in the explosion on June 13, 1980, Smith left Guyana for French Guiana where he worked and lived under the name of Cyril Milton Johnson until he died in 2002 from lung cancer.
Before the Commission of Inquiry yesterday, Sergeant Adams testified that she had checked for and brought forth the application forms for passports issued to Smith under both his names.
Adams did not produce a form for the passport issued right after Dr. Rodney’s death since this could not be found.
She said that on Cyril Milton Johnson’s forms there were the stamp of the top cop affixed and that meant that the document ought to have been expedited. She said this was clearly done despite failure to adhere to three requirements.
Selwyn Pieters, the lawyer for the Working People’s Alliance, asked whether it was possible that corruption could have been a factor involved in the producing of the passport; that it came under the guise of being a request of the COP.
The revenue stamp, she said under cross examination, was something that was done by the Commissioner’s office as is done with passports issued under such circumstances.
The Immigration Officer who handled the application is slated to testify in the matter as well.
The Passports attributed to the Former Sergeant, by both names William Smith and Cyril Milton Johnson came under scrutiny by every lawyer that cross examined the dead man’s sister, Anne Wagner, yesterday.  Wagner has testified and had been questioned for three days.
Greatest Hoax
Wagner said that her brother was being forced to travel out of the country by the WPA who wanted him out of the way.
She insisted that her brother never went to uplift the passport but rather it was brought to him.
Reading from her book, parts of which Smith contributed, Wagner said “He told me he would bring me up to date with the devolvement…He said after careful consideration by the best brains in the party, the WPA, they had devised a strategy to change history. He said the strategy involved using the accident to our advantage, turning our loss to our gain.”
“Mr. Fowler said they would use the death of Dr. Rodney as a platform to launch the revolution. He said history would show that the PNC Government provoked the revolution. Mr. Fowler said they needed some more time to organise their plan and work without many problems.”
Williams asked the witness to interpret and she said that Fowler was saying that the WPA intended to set up the PNC and to blame the party wrongfully for Dr. Rodney’s death.
“In other years all these years what was put out was the great hoax… the greatest hoax” Williams suggested. The witness responded “I would say so too sir.”
Capture Burnham
The lawyer referred the witness to page 24 of the book where it was written “Dr. Rodney said that the time had come for Burnham regime to pay for its crimes and it was our duty (the WPA) to stop him (Forbes Burnham) before he seized absolute power by changing the constitution.”
“Dr. Rodney said that several stages of the revolution were already completed; we would put the final stages in place soon and he was looking forward to one phase of the revolution with special interest. This was capturing of Forbes Burnham and some of his close colleagues.”
She affirmed that this was told to her by Smith and this was the politician’s plan. Probed further, Wagner said that she understood that to mean they intended to physically capture him by force.
Parts of the book spoke too about the routes via which Burnham had three houses with three means of escaping from each: by boat, helicopter or by car. Smith spoke of ways to block Burnham’s escape.
She agreed that these were acts contemplated by the WPA and that the WPA had the then ruler under surveillance. The book spoke too of forcing him to flee by boat by night and having a serious accident than to allow the WPA to capture him.
Smith in his book too, as read to the Commission, spoke of Rodney’s plans to humiliate the president with the use of the judicial system and convicting him for his crimes and his political career.
Rodney had mentioned several crimes that Burnham had committed: murder, torture, sexual harassment of women and conversion of public funds to his personal use. The witness said, however, that she was not told of Burnham being charged.
Also, Smith said that if Burnham had escaped he would seek political asylum but he would have become a constant “threat to our government” and they could not let him escape. This she interpreted to mean, they would get Burnham by any means necessary.
She said she believed Smith and the contents of the book were true.

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