Lost lives

Jan 13, 2013 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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The People’s Progressive Party seems intent on obstructing any attempt to investigate criminal violence during Bharrat Jagdeo’s 12-year presidency.  Despite its majority in the National Assembly up to 2011 and its current occupancy of executive office, the PPP has never attempted to account to this nation for the hundreds of lives lost during that terrible period known as the ‘troubles.’
The PPP has failed to conduct inquiries into the assassinations of its own Minister of Agriculture in La Bonne Intention; of the head of the Police Force’s Target Special Squad on the Linden-Soesdyke Highway; of the deputy head of the Customs Narcotics Unit in Buxton and of the attempted assassination of the Director of Public Prosecution at Nathoo’s Bar in Kitty.
It has refused to conduct inquiries into the massacres in Bagotstown-Eccles, Lusignan, Bartica and Lindo Creek. The PPP even refused to conduct an inquiry into the killings of its own Progressive Youth Organisation activist and two policemen at the close of its own 27th Congress at Rose Hall, Corentyne.
There is no doubt that the ‘troubles’ were the result of the rise of drug cartels and the flood of illegal narcotics and firearms which brought an unprecedented wave of criminal violence into this country during the first decade of this millennium. The consequence of this narco-trade has been a bloody battle to extend the drug lords’ empire and to eliminate anyone who resisted them.
The Head of the Presidential Secretariat – who is also Chairman of the Central Intelligence Committee – made a significant statement only three months after five wanted men escaped from the Georgetown Prison on 23rdFebruary, 2002. He declared that the crime wave was “drug-related.”He went on to explain that the original members of the ‘gang of five’ escapees were not the only ones responsible for the surge in crime. He announced then that there was “plausible evidence to suggest that there is a body out there that is involved in criminal activities and that it is not the escapees and those who have been associated with the escapees.”
The HPS himself introduced the expression ‘phantom’ force to describe the gangs responsible for the perpetration of execution murders.
Any mystery about the ‘phantom’ gangs evaporated in October 2003 when a former gang member made the startling decision to expose the gang’s links to a government minister.  Before he could appear at a commission of inquiry to investigate those allegations, however, he was shot dead in his bed on the night of 24th June, 2004.
The drug war and the ‘phantom’ gangs were the work of a single mastermind. At his trial in the United States, the crook was described as controlling the cocaine trade in Guyana largely because “he was backed by a paramilitary squad that would murder, threaten and intimidate others at his directive. His enforcers committed violent acts and murders on his orders that were directly in furtherance of his drug-trafficking conspiracy.”
A self-confessed former member of the ‘Phantom’ gang and a Drug Enforcement Agency informant told the US court that the mastermind admitted that to run the ‘phantom’ gang and to pay all of his gangsters, he would have to land 500 kg of cocaine per year into the US and Europe!
The mastermind had been allowed to recruit several serving or former policemen into his organization and made no attempt to conceal his activities and his connections with the authorities. As part of his enforcement operations, he was allowed to acquire intercept equipment which enabled him to listen to the conversations and determine the locations of his intended victims.
The cellular intercept equipment had been sold to the Government of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana by the UK Smith-Myers Company!
A Guyana Defence Force patrol, in one case, intercepted and searched the mastermind’s vehicle on Wednesday 4thDecember 2002 at Good Hope, East Coast Demerara. The mastermind was accompanied by a serving member of the Police Force. The vehicle contained an arsenal of weapons including M-16 assault rifles with night vision devices; Uzi sub-machine gun with silencer; Glock 9mm pistols; 12-gauge shotgun; other small calibre weapons; bullet-proof vests; helmets; a computer and other electronic gadgetry with digitised electronic maps and plans of Georgetown and certain targeted East Coast villages.
In another case, the mastermind’s accomplices were arrested on 1st September 2004 when the police raided a business enterprise. The police seized ammunition, guns, millions of dollars in local currency, a pair of female police uniforms and wig, a flashlight, a computer and communication equipment and a gun-cleaning kit. Again, a magistrate’s court dismissed the charges against the crooks.
Next came the mastermind’s cocky publication of a whole-page ‘Statement’ in the newspapers on 12th May 2006 boasting of his exploits.
The mastermind fled to Suriname where he was arrested, accompanied by a serving member of the Police Force, on 15th June 2006. He was expelled from Suriname and, on 30thJune was arraigned before court on a charge of “conspiring to import cocaine” into the USA, by 29th June 2006, bringing this phase of his criminal career to an end.
Jailed for fifteen years, he leaves many unanswered questions about how many lives were lost in the killing fields of Guyana.
The PPP now owes the nation a detailed and an accurate account of its ministers’ links to the mastermind and a record of the hundreds of lives lost during that terrible period known as the ‘troubles.’

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