Two grilled over Allison, Waddell killings

Jan 13, 2010 News

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– released on station bail
Police on Sunday released two men after questioning them for days in relation to the killings of boxing coach Donald Allison and journalist, political activist and talk show host, Ronald Waddell.
The men were detained last Tuesday and were released Sunday on $100,000 station bail each.
Senior police sources declined to disclose the names of the persons who were arrested, but this newspaper was reliably informed that they are both former policemen.
However, senior police officials did confirm that the detainees were questioned in the presence of their attorneys.

The Guyana Police Force has been mandated to investigate the killings of both Waddell and Allison, following revelations during the trial of American attorney Robert Simels.
Simels was the lawyer representing confessed Guyanese drug trafficker Shaheed ‘Roger’ Khan, who has since begun serving 15 years in prison for trafficking cocaine into the United States of America.
An informant, Guyanese Selwyn Vaughn, who had secretly recorded Simels, who was attempting to bribe and eliminate witnesses in the Khan trial, had testified that Roger Khan had ordered the execution of both Waddell and Allison.
Waddell was executed outside his Subryanville, Georgetown residence on January 30, 2006, while Allison was gunned down outside the Ricola Boxing Gym in Agricola on the East Bank of Demerara, on September 8, 2005.
Vaughn told a New York court that Allison had facilitated the safe passage of guns for the Buxton gang, which was headed by the now-dead Rondell ‘Fine Man’ Rawlins.
According to Vaughn, Allison was a close relative of embattled former GDF officer David Clarke, who was the subject for elimination by Simels and his client Roger Khan.
In a part of the transcript of his recording during conversations with Simels, Vaughn disclosed that Roger Khan, who had confessed to fighting the Buxton gang led by Rondell ‘Fineman’ Rawlins, was aware that Allison was providing logistic support to the criminals.
Part of the transcript read: “RS (Robert Simels): “What did you observe in terms of Donald Allison that led you to believe one way or the other, whether he was favourable to Clarke, favourable to… at this point Rawlins, we’re talking 2004, 2005, Sean Brown’s dead, so…”
SV(Selwyn Vaughn) : “Um, information started to come in that Allison staying with these guys in Buckstein (Buxton) and to some extent giving support as financial or logistic, whatever, he’s giving support you know…  somewhere along the line there.”
RS: “You’re saying that it was (50:50) is this information you were getting?”
SV: “Well, it came to me from sources…Roger also got it from other sources, you know, not just me. So you would hear that Donald Allison is helping these people. I mean Roger suggests to me that you knew that Allison was hiding weapons at a mining camp. Yeah, because they had this thing whereby, this Buxton…  they were importing … getting guns and so on imported from the US, apparently in like, fake bottoms for these crates and these kinds of thing. And what we were told is that Allison was the person that would take possession of these guns when they get to Guyana.”
According to the informant, he spoke to Roger Khan after Allison was killed, but declined to confirm if Khan was linked to the killing.

Vaughn in his recorded conversation with Simels, had also linked Khan and his ‘Phantom Gang’ to the killing of Ronald Waddell.
Vaughn, who is another self-confessed former member of the ‘Phantom Squad’, testified that Khan ordered the execution of Ronald Waddell, an anti-Government talk-show host, at his home in Subryanville.
According to reports at the time, a dark-coloured car took the gunmen to the scene, where they were apparently watching Waddell’s movements from the seawall.
As soon as Waddell stepped into his car, two gunmen ran across the road and opened fire on the vehicle. They then ran back across the road, jumped into their car and sped away east along the highway.
Vaughn had testified that he was in a Burgundy AT 192 motor car when four other named members of the squad turned up and shot Waddell.
He told the court he had been the lookout man who was tracking Waddell and he called Khan on his cell phone that night and reported that the talk show host had left his residence and his car was idling on the roadway.
Within minutes, four members of Khan’s squad, all former members of the Guyana Police Force named by Vaughn, turned up and shot Waddell.
He said that immediately after the murder, Khan reported the incident to Dr Leslie Ramsammy, Minister of Health.
The Minister has categorically denied any link to Khan or members of his gang.
Following the revelations, a large section of the society demanded an investigation, with the main opposition People’s National Congress Reform calling for an international inquiry.
But a team headed by Crime Chief Seelall Persaud was mandated to investigate Khan’s possible links to the killings as was revealed in the New York trial.
The Guyana Police Force had written to the United States Embassy in Georgetown, requesting their assistance in the investigations into Shaheed ‘Roger’ Khan’s drug operations.
However, the Embassy had assured that that information would be provided at the end of court proceedings against Khan and his attorney Roberts Simels.
But up to yesterday, the local authorities indicated that they are still awaiting the requested assistance.
A police source indicated that although Khan’s two former associates were released, this in no way means that they have been exonerated.

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