The end of a chapter

Oct 17, 2009 Editorial

The sentencing of Shaheed Roger Khan has brought an end to one chapter in Guyana’s history. It was a bloody chapter that saw the death of so many people, some of them criminals. It was a chapter that almost transformed Guyana into a war zone with men bearing sophisticated guns walking the streets with virtual impunity.
Those were the days when policemen were afraid to appear on the streets in their uniforms because they felt that they were ready targets for gunmen. During that period, more policemen died that in the entire 175-year history of the Guyana Police Force.
The streets became deserted at sundown and businesses faltered. People were kidnapped and in some cases, their bodies turned up in the most unlikely places. There were whispers and the police failed to arrest anyone.
There are those who would say that Shaheed ‘Roger’ Khan set up a squad to challenge the gunmen who had broken out of the Camp Street jail and who had spawned a reign of terror in the city and its environs.
Others would say that Khan and his drug empire fuelled the rain of death that descended on the land and that others capitalized on the wave of terror to do their own criminal acts. During the reign of terror there was talk that the government was involved and reporters made bold to question President Bharrat Jagdeo about any possible involvement with Mr Khan. He denied but the whispers continued. Three years after Khan was arrested in Trinidad and whisked away to the United States what purported to be evidence surfaced that the government might have been complicit in the operation of Mr Khan and his squad. The opposition parties are insisting that this is the case and they are calling for an investigation.
It is telling that Shaheed ‘Roger’ Khan’s relatives actually stated that the government owes Khan a lifetime debt of gratitude and that they should not only provide him with security for life, but that they should also pay him a pension equivalent to that which President Bharrat Jagdeo would get when he retires. There must be something that they know but which they are not telling.
Shaheed Khan was involved in so many things; he owned housing schemes; supported nightclubs; opened big businesses and operated in such a manner that he was able to attract leading people from the Guyana Police Force.
Money flowed during his reign and there were smiles on the faces of many. There were those who suddenly believed that they were beyond the law and often took the law into their own hands. But what would always be the talking point would be the confrontation between Khan and his gang and the men who holed out in Buxton but who left that safe haven to challenge anyone and anything. Many died.
None can forget what must be the flash point in that confrontation in October 2002 when suddenly the men who had escaped from the jail and who could not be found suddenly died within hours of each other. In one week more than a dozen men died, some on the streets of Georgetown.
The words of Crime Chief Seelall Persaud are still reverberating in the heads of many. He said that the killing stopped after Shaheed Roger Khan was arrested.
People are attributing even more things to this man, Khan. Telephone spy equipment in Guyana has been attributed to him and indeed when he recorded conversations with the then Police Commissioner, people began to understand that no man was too high and mighty for Mr Khan.
The streets will be full of talk about him long after the dust would have settled. There would be the divisions in the society along sharp lines because they are those who insist that he saved the government and the country when the police were made redundant by sheer firepower; that he confronted the gunmen with gunmen of his own.
There are also those who would see him as a killer who snuffed out the lives of the innocent who dared to confront him. They would point to the deaths of Ronald Waddell and Donald Allison, incidentally, two men who had a lot in common. The latter group would also point to the drug trade that was never bigger in the history of the country. They would say that Khan wrecked Guyana.

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