The President now has enough information to launch a probe

Aug 03, 2009 Letters

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Dear Editor,

When political activist and talk show host, Ronald Waddell, was gunned down execution style in front of his home in January, 2006, most observers concluded it was politically motivated, given 1) Waddell was a harsh government critic, 2) eyewitness accounts of the massive use of firepower, and 3) the easy use of a waiting getaway car by his assailants. No questions asked. No remarks made. No robbery executed. Just a plain rubout!

Among those who weighed in on the cold-blooded execution was President Bharrat Jagdeo, who, at the time, described Waddell’s death as ‘unfortunate’. But while many of us had our strong suspicions, we never thought Cabinet Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy allegedly was in cahoots with Khan on that hit and more. Well, that is if we were to go by what self-confessed look-out, Selwyn Vaughn, said in recent court testimony. He sat in the waiting getaway car as Waddell was killed in a fusillade of gunfire and he and the triggermen then drove to a popular hangout joint where the group met with Khan who then called Minister Ramsammy to confirm Waddell’s death.

This is the most powerful eyewitness testimony that actually places a very senior government functionary at the centre of a high-profile conspiracy to murder and implicates by extension the rest of the government as being an accessory to the murder of Waddell and most likely many others who were wiped out extra-judicially. Before this bombshell revelation, however, the Minister was already in a dilemma of being allegedly involved with helping convicted drug baron Roger Khan procure the now infamous spy equipment Khan used to illegally eavesdrop on private phone conversations in Guyana. Curiously, did the President ever speak out against Khan being in possession of or using the spy equipment? I am sure if the Buxton gang was ever caught with that equipment, we wouldn’t be hearing the end of the President’s tirade.

But while it would be Vaughn’s word against the Minister’s, it won’t be helpful to the Minister if Khan gave investigators a similar story line outside the presence of Vaughn, and it certainly makes the Minister’s defence all the more difficult if there is a paper trail showing he was actually a party to the purchase of the spy equipment. The stout denials by him and the Guyana Government must be taken as seriously as the charges themselves, but at the end of the day, the evidence is all that matters.

When the spy equipment was seized from Simel’s office, the FBI checked with the spy shop in Florida and saw, if not obtained, a copy of a letter purportedly signed by a Guyana Government official authorising purchase of the spy equipment, and if it could be authenticated that Minister Ramsammy’s signature is on that letter it could be the most compelling physical link between the Minister and Khan’s shenanigans in Guyana. If the signature was forged by Khan or anyone else, it could partially vindicate the Minister, because questions will still linger about the Minister’s association with Khan’s drug and Phantom Squad operations.

The only people right now who hold the trump card in this evolving matter are the US authorities, and armed with whatever information they have, they are the ones we must look to for the next step, not the Guyana Government, which continues to be in strong denial. If the US authorities believe the Minister did work with Khan, who ran a drug smuggling and money laundering empire in Guyana while simultaneously spearheading the Phantom Squad, it is bound to raise questions about whether the Minister and or others knowingly provided state protection for Khan’s illicit drug running and money laundering operations.

As Vaughn testified under oath, Khan said he needed to ship 500 kilos of cocaine a year to North America and Europe in order for him to maintain his crime-fighting machinery, so if Minister Ramsammy was helping Khan fight armed and dangerous criminals, was Minister Ramsammy also helping him with the drug operations by way of assuring protection from the law? And for an intelligent man, was Minister Ramsammy not aware Khan could have kept financing crime sprees just to keep the government thinking it really needed Khan’s crime fighting involvement so it then had to keep overlooking his nefarious activities?

Minister Ramsammy has a lot of questions to answer, and even if he holds dual citizenship, once the US authorities have enough circumstantial evidence that can implicate him as either having knowledge of or providing cover for Khan’s drug operations, they could be inviting him to answer questions in the United States under oath. Making angry denials in Guyana is different from lying under oath in the United States, so the Minister should have his answers ready if he is ever asked under oath about 1) Khan’s drug smuggling and money laundering operations in Guyana, 2) Khan placing a call to Minister Ramsammy after Waddell was killed, (the cell phone carriers of these two men’s phones can provide records to prove or disprove), 3) Ramsammy visiting Khan’s Bel Air business operations, 4) Ramsammy’s purported signature on the letter authorising the spy equipment purchase or even the appearance of his phone number and e-mail address on any documents, and 5) whether Vaughn’s claim that President Jagdeo ‘won’t want Khan to talk’ meant the President actually knew about Khan.

Given the volatile nature of the political situation in the months preceding Khan’s Phantom Squad, when armed and dangerous criminal elements waged a bloody battle that seemed designed to undermine the government, it would surely stretch incredulity if a senior Cabinet minister knew what Khan and his gang were up to in trying to ‘save the government’, yet the President (as Commander in Chief), the Head of the Presidential Secretariat (as Secretary of the Defence Board) and others close to them did not know. Come on now, people, the President was about to lose his grip on power and he doesn’t know who saved him?

Even Khan’s unrestricted access to the office of the Police Commissioner, which saw him bug the Commissioner’s phone and released recorded conversations to media houses, would be of interest to the US authorities since they’d want to know who the top ranking police officer was that let Khan do that in the Commissioner’s absence. And quite strangely, the President at the time seemed more concerned about what was revealed on the tape than the fact that the top cop’s phone was bugged. For a drug baron, Khan also had undue influence even in the police force, getting one former acting top cop to avail police officers to work alongside Khan’s Phantom Squad members in extra-judicial killings.

Anyway, just as Ramsammy has questions to answer, the President also has unfinished business to take care of. After failing to launch a probe into Khan’s business operations when the US first put out a narcotics report on Guyana that named Khan as a drug smuggler, and after failing to launch a probe into Khan’s self-confessed role using his resources to ‘save the government’ by fighting dangerous criminals, the President did promise to have the police launch an investigation into allegations pertaining to Khan as soon as the US authorities release information. Well, it seems there is enough information from the current Simels trial in New York for the President to finally ask the police to act.

The only question is: Where will a genuine probe start with so many denials by the Jagdeo administration? There has to at least be an acknowledgement by the government that something is amiss and warrants a probe, so denials will only serve as an obstacle. One useful start is to obtain a copy of the letter with the Minister’s purported signature and have it published alongside the signature on a document from a year ago. If there is no match, the Minister’s credibility would be bolstered, even though he would still have other serious questions to answer. Otherwise, there are too many open-ended aspects to this saga that need official closure and the sooner the better before we end up with a paralyzed and more dysfunctional government system.

Emile Mervin

 

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