DPP has 10 days to explain Top Cop rape charge

Feb 28, 2012 News

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–    Senior DPP attorney said to be godmother of complainant’s child

Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Shalimar Ali-Hack has been given ten days to explain how

she arrived at her decision to recommend that a rape charge be instituted against Police Commissioner Henry Greene.
A week ago, acting Chief Justice Ian Chang had ordered the DPP’s attorney to lodge with the court all the statements in the case, including those by the Commissioner and those by the woman who claims she was raped by the Commissioner.
However, the DPP failed to explain how she arrived at her decision. Instead, she gave the court a reportedly bland statement that did not go down well with the Chief Justice.
“Look, I feel so,” Chang interpreted the DPP’s statement to the court to be saying. He said she did not present any analysis to back up her arguments.
“I concluded that there is sufficient evidence; that’s all we get (from the DPP),” a frustrated Chang stated. He said that the DPP was not being asked whether she had sufficient evidence, but rather to say how she made her decision to advice the rape charge.
The Commissioner is seeking to have the High Court quash the DPP’s recommendation that Mr Greene be charged with rape.
In presenting the documents as an annex to her affidavit, the DPP did not explain her decision. Justice Chang warned state attorney Naresh Harnanan that he was not interested in the lawyer’s analysis, but rather, he wanted “The analysis of the DPP.”
Harnanan begged of the court ten days to submit the DPP’s analysis in writing.
Meanwhile, things took a strange twist when the Commissioner’s lead attorney, Senior Counsel Rex McKay informed the court that he had sought confirmation from the DPP whether a senior attorney in the chambers of the DPP was the godmother of one of the children of the woman who claims to have been raped.

The attorney from the DPP Chambers McKay refers to could be the same attorney who lives in the East Coast village where the alleged rape victim lives.
McKay also made reference to the fact that another criminal matter regarding the woman is before the DPP Chambers, but the case is yet to be pronounced on. The Chief Justice said that why the DPP did not institute charges against the woman in a blackmail case is another issue.

Last weekend, the Transparency Institute of Guyana called for the government to fire the Police Commissioner if he refuses to resign.
“By indulging in sexual relations with a person of such obvious vulnerability, Mr. Greene abused his position and his authority.
“This clearly amounts to corrupt behaviour by internationally accepted standards, under which corruption is defined as “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain,” the Institute said in a statement.
The woman in the scandal has claimed she was raped, but the Commissioner has insisted that the sex was consensual. Following an investigation by local and Jamaican detectives, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) recommended that Mr Greene be charged with rape. However, the Commissioner moved to the High Court to have the DPP’s decision quashed.
“Regardless of whether this sexual encounter was consensual or not, it violates the minimum standards of professionalism and integrity required of any member of law enforcement and certainly that required of the Commissioner,” the human rights watchdog said in a strongly worded statement condemning Mr Greene’s behavior.
Last December, a 34-year-old mother of two claimed that she was forced into a city hotel and raped by Greene.
She said they first met on November 15, 2011, when she went to meet the Top Cop to enquire about the status of an investigation regarding her.
She said that in the process of the investigations, the Police had taken possession of her mobile phone and she wanted to recover the phone.
The woman claimed that Greene told her to meet him on November 22 to uplift the phone and afterwards he offered her a ride home.
However, she said she was driven to a city hotel where the Commissioner pulled out a gun and waved it at her, causing her to be afraid. At this point, she said she reluctantly exited the vehicle after Greene made a strange demand.
In a statement he made to investigators, Greene said that when the woman came to meet him at Police Headquarters on November 22 last it was upon her insistence that they meet “socially” and so ended up at a villa and had sex.
The Top Cop has claimed that he did not have a gun in his possession at the time.
Greene took over responsibility for the Guyana Police Force on July 24, 2006 when then Commissioner of Police Mr. Winston Felix, proceeded on pre-retirement leave.  He is the ninth national of Guyana to command the Force since its establishment on July 1, 1839.
Greene joined the Police Force in February 1974.

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