Simels forever linked to Guyana

Dec 06, 2009 Features / Columnists, My Column

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I was heartened last week when one of my cousins who lives overseas complimented me on the column I did. He even told me that his eldest son is now an ardent reader of that column. You made my day, Maurice Rodney, and Little Man must be smiling from wherever he is.
I know that many Guyanese like the tidbits I write about and I intend to keep doing more of the same. This week I am forced to look at recent developments in the United States where so many Guyanese live. Indeed, that country is a second Guyana to many who left either to seek their fortunes or to escape perceived persecution.
Some left involuntarily, courtesy of the Drug Enforcement Agency, and quite a few would get a chance to live in the adopted country for free for a few years to come.
I am often amazed at the lengths to which people would go to enter the United States and at the same time there are those who get to go without a hassle and wish that they did not have to.
But this is not about them although they are involved in some way. It is about Robert Simels who first came to local notice when he set out to defend Roger Khan on drug trafficking charges. His was a case of win at all cost.
From my corner in layman’s world, I know that lawyers take a case because they believe in their client. They believe that there is some aspect of the law that would clear their client of any wrongdoing or of a particular crime. And indeed not all killings are murders and not all thefts are what they seem.
Similarly, not every woman who cries rape has been raped, so lawyers set out to defend the accused in good faith and sometimes at great cost. I understand that Robert Simels demanded in excess of US$1.5 million to defend Roger Khan. That would be a whopping $300 million.
However, lawyers pursue witnesses and they collect evidence. Of course there are some who fabricate evidence. I know of cases right here in Guyana where lawyers actually lie to the court in the interest of their clients.
But in this case, the reports suggest that Simels went more than an extra mile. He did more than lie.
I know the man having met him a few times in Guyana. He was a high profile lawyer and he had made millions of real dollars defending people, particularly drug dealers and members of the Mafia.
He was aggressive. I remember him coming to Guyana and trying to get people who would speak on Roger Khan’s behalf. There were a few who really believed that Roger Khan was a necessary tool in Guyana at the time. I still hear Roger Khan telling me that this government let him down.
He said that Burnham looked after those who did things in his interest but this government has let those who help go to the mercies of the wind, ending up any which way the wind blows. In Roger Khan’s case the wind took him to jail.
Simels was bent on keeping Roger Khan out of jail and he had numerous plans, one of them leading him to Selwyn Vaughn who drove a large nail into his coffin. I also knew Vaughn and actually had one bad experience at his hands.
Gunmen had just killed five pressmen at Kaieteur News. The newspaper was keeping a wake that night when Vaughn surfaced. He met with the Managing Director, Glenn Lall, and told him that he, Lall, was marked for death. In fact, he said that Adam Harris and Glenn Lall were marked for death at the hands of Rondell Rawlins for collaborating with Roger Khan.
When Glenn told me this news, needless to say, I was shocked and scared. I was one who did not want to die. But I had doubts. I called around and found out that the story was contrived and concocted. But I suspect that Vaughn made money because I know Glenn Lall. It was this same Vaughn who nailed Simels.
He also exposed the nature of the lawyer as a man who would go to all lengths to help his client. I read the transcripts; I read that Vaughn said that I like a liquor and Simels concurring that I like my beers. Simels knew that I preferred rum and he must have said beers to see whether Vaughn really knew what he was saying. There was nothing more about me in the transcripts.
I read about Simels telling Vaughn to neutralize dangerous witnesses, one of them being David Clarke who is now a free man and who, I am sure, will enter some witness protection programme because it is unusual for the United States to allow convicted drug traffickers who are not citizens to remain in the country.
That plan failed and Roger Khan decided that he was not going to trial for obvious reasons. The disclosures would have been devastating. And that was the end of Simels, a rich and proficient lawyer.
What is amazing was that the United States would place so much emphasis on Khan. I am sure that there were equally large drug dealers in Guyana in the past but none seemed to have attracted so much attention as Khan did.
I remember Condoleezza Rice saying that the United States was not interested in seeking Khan’s extradition. There must have been a radical change of heart or a plan that when sprung into action, delivered Khan to them on a platter.
What I do know is that Vaughn’s revelations to the Americans brought to notice so many things that we in Guyana only guessed at. There was no mention of the people who went after the five prisoners who escaped from jail on Mash Day 2002; no mention of these people who killed Dale Moore, Mark Fraser and some others the same day in October 2002.
Was that the work of Roger Khan and his followers? Vaughn never said. He himself said that he was a member of the gang and was at the scene of many killings. Why he never told the local police and bring an end to the killings may never be known unless he knew that the police force was riddled with informers. What I do know was that the Americans believed him.
Simels told the very Americans that people in the government were complicit in Khan’s operations. Did they believe him? Perhaps that never came out because the Guyana Government was not on trial.
But what did both Vaughn and Clarke tell them that has not come out? Some believe that Roger Khan also spoke a bit, given that he entered into a plea deal. Will there be rendition for some people who now sit in high office? I know that some people have traveled outside the country and have not been arrested. Did the wrong people travel, leaving the culprits behind, scared to travel even close to the Cheddi Jagan International Airport?
Only time will tell.

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