The Khan fiasco is one messy issue

Jun 28, 2008 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
Once again, the gravity of the issue concerning the ongoing fallout from the Roger Khan spy equipment fiasco is the only reason why I would entertain a person who prefers to use a pseudonym instead of a real name like I do.

1. All of his or her fluff, bluff and meaningless stuff aside, in this my last pointed response to Peeping Tom, who wrote, “Peeper nah cry fuh Gadget,” (Saturday, June 21), I did write that Khan admitted financing the extra judicial killings of dangerous criminals.

Peeping Tom countered that as far as what Khan said, the facts would reveal that Khan admitted to assisting the authorities with intelligence that he gathered using his own resources.

What resources are we talking about here that did not require being bought with Khan’s finances? Or did Khan walk the streets and find pieces of paper and wood and pools of rain water which he used?

And since Khan assisted the authorities with intelligence gathered by using his own resources, which resources had to be paid for, did he not automatically finance the extra judicial killing of dangerous criminals?
There may be more to come in the trial!

2. As for linking me to independent media operatives who roasted the government in the past, Peeping Tom needs to be reminded that had it not been for proactive independent media houses in Guyana we, the people, would not have known a lot of the stuff that has been playing out over the last decade. We can’t rely on the Guyana Government for facts/truth because it gives out only what it wants us to know.

This is why the AFC’s push for a Freedom of Information Law needs to grow teeth and bite the authorities where it hurts most so they will stop holding back information.
3. I never said Khan killed anyone. He himself said he never did.

However, if you confess to orchestrating the death of anyone, and the law does not give you that authority, then even if the President or a Cabinet minister tells you to kill someone that still does not make your actions legal.

You are an accomplice to murder. Moreover, if you collaborate with others to kill people, but you did not commit the physical act, you are guilty of being an accomplice or just as guilty as the actual killers.

4. From one news report, yet to be debunked, Khan’s lawyers revealed that Khan had permission from the Guyana Government to buy the spy equipment.

The lawyers reportedly mentioned the name of an FBI agent who investigated Khan’s claim in Florida and found the claim to be authentic. Meaning, someone in the Guyana Government did sign a letter authorising the purchase and importation of the equipment.

The US authorities did not, as of the time of this writing, contradict Khan’s lawyers’ version of an FBI verification of the letter purportedly from the Guyana Government. Inferentially, the US authorities have pretty much concurred with Khan’s lawyers.

The only one who publicly commented on what Khan’s lawyers said was President Bharrat Jagdeo.
5. The laptop equipment in question first appeared in the news when it was confiscated in early December, 2002 by the GDF from the so-called Good Hope Trio, traveling in a vehicle with bulletproof windows and reinforced body.

The GDF said it was given to the Police, who then said they did not know where it was. Dr. Roger Luncheon would later say said it was being used to help fight crime and Home Affairs Minister Ronald Gajraj concurred.

It would later be used to bug phones again. This was and is one messy development that could have been avoided if the government had not become strange bedfellows with Khan, only to now have the President claiming Khan should feel the full weight of the US law if he is guilty of charges he is facing.

6. As abhorrent as the dangerous criminals were in 2002-2004, the fight to stop them was the government’s responsibility – not the responsibility of Khan. And while many see Khan as a hero, he has only become a hero at the expense of their government’s integrity.

Now the very government he claimed to have saved from being overthrown by wanton criminality has now turned its back on him.

Who in Guyana can trust the PPP government after what it did to Khan?
I don’t need Peeping Tom, whoever s/he is, to lecture me. Go lecture the President who is yet to respond to Khan’s claims of ‘using his resources’ to fight criminals who wound up dead rather than facing justice.

Moreover, Peeping Tom’s caveman mentality that he didn’t cry for Inspector Gadget is exactly the mentality that pervades the government: Let the end of these criminals justify the means by which they met their end because the system is not about justice anymore, but all about revenge and showmanship.

Mr. Editor, it is not just about the dangerous criminals who were wiped out extra judicially; it is also about the slayings of youths and others whom the late George Bacchus – a self-confessed one time informant for Khan’s Phantom Squad – said were being killed by the squad’s members on a murder-for-hire basis.

These triggermen had stepped outside the boundary of their original operations and it deeply bothered Bacchus so he tried to stop it by making rounds to certain people’s offices. For this, he and his brother paid the ultimate price.

There is definitely more to the widening spy equipment story than just about how it came into the country and why it was used.

There are also lots of unanswered questions for mothers and fathers whose sons were killed – not for being criminals, but for having an infraction with persons who had the financial resources to order their deaths. Blood is on almost everybody’s hands!
Emile Mervin
Queens, New York

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