Khan pleads guilty; Simels asked me to testify

Mar 17, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Roger Khan has pleaded guilty. To what? It is when you find out what he has pleaded guilty to then you will realise that certain persons may be in trouble in Guyana. Khan has pleaded guilty to 21 counts of trafficking in narcotics, a gun charge in Vermont and witness obstruction and related matters.
This wasn’t a single violation. This is a man that the US Government has accused of 21 instances of shipping narcotics out of Guyana and other criminal activities. I wrote about logical deduction yesterday; let us dwell on that again. If he confesses to 21 episodes of narcotics involvement in Guyana, then it stands to reason that there were more. This is logical deduction. I guess it can also be your opinion.
It is my opinion that he did. I will say something I never wrote before. Mr. Simels asked to see me. He agreed to meet me at the Kaieteur News. He came with another American attorney, a hugely built balding man with a non-English last name. Present were two of Khan’s right-hand men.
There were Kaieteur staffers present. I have not named them because I do not have their permission. If they agree I will do so in subsequent writings. The conversation lasted one hour. Mr. Simels indicated that he read my writings on Buxton, and therefore I was in a position to testify on the patriotic (Simels’s word) thing that Khan did for Guyana. Simels was familiar with every ounce of outpouring from me on Buxton.
He indicated that he planned to use Khan’s political contribution to Guyana’s politics as part of his defence. He was unambiguous that Khan was a good man who helped Guyana, and that nasty people were now out to get Khan. He wanted me to go to the US to testify that Khan stopped a coup in Guyana by the Opposition.
Simels then got a taste of my politics. I made it clear to him that I knew about Khan’s positive role in fighting the cruel gunmen in Buxton, but I knew nothing of a coup by the Opposition. I did state in two of my articles that a citizen with a legal background with political connections was involved in the Mash Day jailbreak in 2002, and that an opposition politician saw Dale Moore in Buxton on Moore’s birthday.
I also stated in another article that a GDF officer was consorting with the Buxton gunmen. We now know who that is.
Simels and Khan’s two right-hand men pressed me to agree to testify. Somehow they felt that the political defence would be in Khan’s favour. I agreed but I asked Simels for my pound of flesh. In no uncertain terms I told Simels that Khan was close, very close to the Government of Guyana, and I will demand in exchange that Khan, through Simels, press the Guyana Government to democratise.
The first thing that came out of my mouth was that President Jagdeo must respect the legal autonomy of UG and allow us to shape UG’s future without his constant impositions. I made several other demands like democratising the state media and the end to racial discrimination.
Simels looked dazed as I raised my voice and kept insisting that Simels must meet my demands. After I concluded my presentation, Mr. Simels intoned that he cannot give an answer right away. He never got back to me, but I have evidence that he approached a very senior journalist with the same request.
So Khan has pleaded guilty. There will not be a trial, so the prosecution cannot expose the connection between Khan’s criminal enterprise and powerful politicians in Guyana. This is a tremendous setback to democracy here. The world should have been told how Khan, through certain powerful people in the avenue of Guyana’s political elitism, used his drug-trafficking establishment to carve out a niche in the corridors of power.
It is not over, one hopes. Certain little dictators in Guyana have escaped having their dirty linen washed in a Federal Court in Brooklyn. But Khan obviously spilled his guts to the prosecutors. He had to name names. He had to tell the district attorneys who in Guyana facilitated his drugs empire.
During Khan’s reign, politics and narcotics became friends, thus criminality and power merged. It was a dangerous time in Guyana. Khan’s political connections made the rule of Burnham look like child’s play. The Guyanese political elites that helped Khan should join him in a New York jail.
One hopes that this is the beginning of the end for them, and that Guyana’s future can begin to take shape. We need that future sooner than later.

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