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Where is the Lindo Creek suspect?
Questions are being asked about the supposed eyewitness/suspect in the Lindo Creek massacre of eight miners which occurred over a month ago.
Acting Police Commissioner Henry Greene had announced that the police have an eyewitness account of the massacre and that charges will be laid soon.
The police, in a subsequent press release, disclosed that they had a suspect in custody but to date no charges have been laid and the police remain mum on when the suspect will be placed before the court.
Yesterday Crime Chief Seelall Persaud told this newspaper that the matter is still under investigation but he declined to comment further on the matter.
According to the police, the investigations so far have unearthed that the members of the Rondell ‘Fine Man’ Rawlins gang were involved in the killings at Lindo Creek.
“The eyewitness has said that the men were attacked by ‘Fine Man’ and his gang. They went there the night; basically they attacked the men.
They tied them up, they cooked, et cetera and then the next night they were shot and killed,” the Acting Police Commissioner had told members of the media following the recent police anniversary route march two weeks ago.
He added that the eyewitness related that after the shooting, one of the victims was still alive and he was beaten with a hammer until he succumbed.
“That is what we have. We have how they arrived there, we have all the details. That is all I can give you for now,” Greene explained.
The police have declined to confirm if the suspect in custody is the said eyewitness that was referred to by the Acting Commissioner.
But a senior police official hinted that the suspect and the eyewitness may be the same person, since it is unlikely that an outsider would have witnessed what happened at the Lindo Creek camp to provide investigators the information that they have.
Two men have been charged with harbouring Rawlins and his gang, and have been remanded to prison.
One of the men has also been charged along with Rawlins and others with robbery under arms committed on passengers of a minibus at Goat Farm.
However, that accused is not linked to the Lindo Creek massacre.
A police report had earlier stated that evidence gathered had indicated that Rawlins and his gang were responsible for the miners’ deaths.
The confidential report, which the newspaper had managed to obtain, stated that Rawlins had boasted about the massacre while in the process of hijacking a minibus on the Ituni Road.
The owner of the Lindo Creek mining camp, Leonard Arokium, is maintaining that the killing of his employees is not the work of the notorious fugitive.
Arokium had expressed the belief that his employees were killed by members of the security forces operating in the area.
He had explained that it would have been foolish for ‘Fine Man’ and his gang who were fleeing from the security forces to risk going to his camp and taking the time to burn the bodies of his employees, including his son Dax, after killing them.
These accusations led to the local authorities soliciting the assistance of their CARICOM counterparts from Trinidad and Jamaica to carry out forensic and DNA tests.
According to the Acting Police Commissioner, the initial report of the Trinidadian team corroborates what the local investigators have been saying, that the miners were killed by the Rondell Rawlins gang.
Local investigators are awaiting a final report from the Jamaican team who conducted the DNA tests on the miners’ remains.
As long as this situation continues without resolve, there is bound to be speculation about who killed the miners.
In the past, the police were quick to lay the blame on Rawlins and his gang for several massacres including those at Eccles/Agricola, Lusignan and Bartica.
However, this time around they appear not too certain.
Acting Commissioner Greene had said that within recent times, the Guyana Police Force has come under tremendous pressure, with recent calls for independent inquiries into recent events.
This, he said, gives the impression that the force can no longer investigate or can no longer be trusted.
“But I have always maintained that we are people of integrity and we investigate impartially and we maintain our position. We don’t mind who is called to come and do what they call independent inquiry. We’re maintaining that they will find nothing different from what our investigators have unearthed,” the Acting Commissioner said.
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