WHAT KHAN ALSO SAID……..

Oct 27, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

---

There is an orchestrated and ongoing campaign to place Roger Khan in the same bed with the government and to suggest that he took the fight to the “Talibans” with the consent and support of the government.
So far no photograph, phone conversation or video recording of Roger Khan meeting with any top government official has surfaced, but you can bet that once one does and it is deemed as authentic and not a fabrication, then all hell will break loose and the suggestions that Khan was aided and abetted by the government will intensify.
In a small society like Guyana, it is not unusual for people to come into contact with the likes of a Roger Khan. A visit to any of the night clubs in Guyana will reveal a virtual “whose who” of the local middle class. It is not easy to avoid, given the limitations of a small society for someone to not come into contact with certain personalities.
Even the President of Guyana has been known to have his night outs at some of these places.
The fact that one has contact with another should however not be seen as the basis for assuming that one is in bed with that person. Adam Harris, in this very newspaper confessed that he met Fine Man one night on the Buxton linetop. Does this mean that Adam was in bed with Fine Man? Definitely not!
Adam also wrote some time ago that he knew Axel Williams. Does this mean that he was in league with this man against whom so much was alleged after he passed to the Great Beyond? Definitely not!
Robert Simels came to Guyana and said he met with a number of persons. Does this mean that those persons were in league with him, and was it wrong for them to meet with him simply because he was the lawyer for Roger Khan? Definitely not!
One must therefore look beyond these casual contacts before assigning a deeper meaning. In establishing whether there was a relationship between Roger Khan and the government, one must come up with far more convincing evidence than that which has so far been offered.
Simple contact is not good enough since Khan also said that he helped the United States embassy to identify the person involved in the kidnapping of one of its top security officers. There has been no confirmation of this though.
Those who hate Roger Khan’s guts simply because he was said to be a spoke in the wheel of the ambitions of the “Talibans” have twisted and contorted what he said in a newspaper advertisement, in order to achieve their own selfish ends.
They are now putting to Khan, words and statements which he never wrote or uttered. They are saying that he said that he helped the government in the battle against crime; this has further been stretched to say that he helped neutralise threats against the government. This is not what Khan wrote.
In a statement in the press, Khan simply indicated that he had helped the police with information to fight crime. That is, he said he helped them with information. He did not say that he killed anyone. Subsequent developments have established that he was a gather of covert information; he is also accused of hotwiring the telephone of a senior police official, something that is a great embarrassment to the entire law enforcement community.
His statement that he provided the police with information has however been used to script all manner of conspiracy theories against the government.
Khan also said in his statement that he and a top police official were friends for years. Yet not one of the persons who are alleging that he was in bed with the government has questioned the nature of this friendship and its implications for law enforcement in Guyana. Not one.
This shows the selectivity in dealing with facts by those who are waxing the Khan issue for political capital.
If there is to be a call for an investigation into the relationship between Khan and the government based on what Khan said there must equally be an investigation into the claim by Khan that he was friends with a senior law enforcement official.
This column is not pronouncing on any relationship until the evidence has been produced and a case built. The opposition’s case of a prima facie link between the government and Roger Khan rests on something that was mentioned in the Robert Simels trial. That is, that a certain minister of the government helped facilitate the purchase of the spy equipment.
This column has called for the Minister to step aside and for the allegations to be investigated. The government is however unwisely not giving in to this demand.
The allegation that a government minister may have facilitated the purchase of sensitive equipment which was in the hands of a civilian is a serious charge. But it still has to be proven since the minister has denied the allegation.
( To be continued)

---

---