Why the American forensic experts did not come

Jul 06, 2008 Features / Columnists, My Column

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The news is out. The United States of America will not be sending a team of forensic experts to Guyana to probe the slaughter of the eight miners at Lindo Creek almost a month ago. And for good reason I, like so many others, wonder at the request since the crime scene was so contaminated.

The entire country knows that eight miners were killed, some of them shot and some bludgeoned with a hammer. They were packed like sardines and burnt. All that was left were skulls and bones.

Leonard Arokium made the gruesome discovery when he visited the camp after not hearing from his men for about two weeks. The police said that in the wake of the attack at Christmas Falls, the Joint Services had called on all those who had operations in the area to vacate the camps.

The evidence suggests that Arokium’s men did not leave. Instead, some of them actually consorted with the soldiers who were stationed in the area to trap the fleeing bandits.

All this while there were reports that there were no economic activities in the area so it was strange that after the fact the authorities could say that they issued an order for every person conducting economic activities in the area to vacate.

Mr Arokium is of the view that the Joint Services killed his men to cover up a robbery because his men were to wash soil and extract diamonds and that this information was known to the soldiers in the area.

He also argued that the criminals said to be members of a gang operated by Guyana’s most wanted would have been too busy fleeing the soldiers to divert to the camp, kill his men and set the camp alight, an exercise that was bound to attract attention.

He said that he received reports that one of the aircraft patrolling the area spotted the burning camp in the heart of the forest. Whether the Joint Services received such a report is not clear. In fact, whether there was actually a sighting by any aircraft is not clear.

Mr Arokium did make the point that the area is not known for forest fires so if an aircraft did spot the fire then there would or should have been an investigation.

However, the police are firmly convinced that the ‘Fine Man’ gang committed the atrocity because the members felt that they had been betrayed, perhaps by the very people in the camp.

This camp, from all indications, was difficult to locate and located in the mountains. If the criminals did find the camp then they had to know its location and the police are certain that they did.

What is more is that the police say that they have witness accounts of the killing. They claim that some people on a minibus that was hijacked ostensibly by the gunmen, who were fleeing Christmas Falls, heard the gunmen say that they killed some miners in a camp and torched the camp.

However, there is another report that someone told the police that the men who attacked the bus said that they knew that they were going to die because the soldiers had killed some men in the hills.

There has been a lot of speculation, something that the Home Affairs Minister, the Commander in Chief of the Joint Services and the Chief of Staff of the Guyana Defence Force have all warned against.

The bottom line is that the miners died and there needed to be answers. So, President Bharrat Jagdeo made a request to the Americans for forensic help.

But having asked for help, the authorities should have sealed off the camp so that whatever evidence was contained there would have remained, perhaps except for some environmental degradation.

But this was not to be. The authorities not only walked all over the crime scene, they removed evidence. Police Commissioner Henry Greene reported that the men removed spent shells.

Later, the nation learnt, although this knowledge was not widespread, that the authorities also removed the charred remains and heaven knows what else from the camp. This then begs the question, “What were the experts going to do?” “What did the authorities expect them to find?”

The Americans have been nice about the entire thing. They did not ask those questions; they simply said that they had a resources problem.

This surely cannot be true because in the wake of 9-11, the Americans churned out hundreds of forensic experts to comb the various sites.

It was the same with the Oklahoma bombing. Hundreds of forensic experts could have been found. There are no crises in the United States so some of those experts could have been produced but the authorities wanted to be diplomatic. They did not want to say that any visit would have been a waste of time. We should have known that.

What is not common knowledge is that Guyana did approach the Federal Bureau of Investigation for help in finding Rondell Rawlins and the Americans on a few occasions did respond to that request.

But the facts are that they either had precious little to work with or their best efforts were simply not good enough.
The Alliance for Change has said that it has found some British experts. I suppose that any investigation would be useful.

However, over time the police have not been known to protect crime scenes. The British did that for months in the wake of the aircraft bombing at Lockerbie. They preserved that scene for months. We must learn to do the same.

And as an aside. On Friday night I happened upon a movie named Lumumba. I did not see it through because my bed called. But I do remember a christening many, many years ago, perhaps in 1960.

A mother christened her son Patrice Lumumba at St Jude’s Anglican Church, Blankenburg.
I wonder what became of that child. He is in his 40s and I would like to meet him.

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