Shaggy is not the only one singing

Jul 26, 2015 Features / Columnists, My Column

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When a gunman shot and killed Courtney Crum-Ewing, immediately people ascribed the killing to politicians. The conclusion was that since Crum-Ewing had become a high profile individual who was campaigning against the government, then he could mobilise the undecided voters.
At the same time, there are people who do not like to be criticized, and the fact that Crum-Ewing was doing just that with a finger pointed at the former Attorney General then people concluded that the former Attorney General had a hand in his death.
I know Anil Nandlall, and for all his talking he is incapable of killing anyone. Could he have ordered the hit? I don’t think so, because he knows more than anyone else that people talk and killers are people. It was therefore surprising that Crum-Ewing’s murder landed at his doorstep. One of the suspects actually performed bodyguard duties for him.
He has come out to say that his meeting and his employment of this bodyguard happened by chance, and I believe him, although I suspect that he would have seen this fellow around given that it is now coming to light that the accused was said to be a frequent visitor to Freedom House and actually performed guard duties there.
But Anil Nandlall picked up where Shaggy left off when he sang, “It wasn’t me”.
We now hear more loudly the claim by the government that there are intellectual authors of certain crimes. One must now ask who gave the second accused the order to kill Crum-Ewing.
At one stage the view was that the killing would go unsolved, but in life things do happen. Thanks to the technology in the hands of the police they were able to find the gun that was used.  When they found the gun they moved swiftly to unravel the case and it seems as if they have. But they are still to make the identity of the intellectual author known.
These developments have caused even more revelations to surface. The talk this week has been about Sean Hinds and what he has to say. He told me that he decided to talk because he hears that the authorities were trying to pin Crum-Ewing’s murder on him. I do believe that he had nothing to do with that murder, but that he knows more than he is saying or is prepared to say at this time.
He did mention that during his visit to Freedom House in the wake of a visit by a police rank, a person became jittery when he spoke about his reason for visiting. That was a most interesting revelation. This person was said to be linked to the killing, but for some strange reason the police never moved to question him. If they did I was unaware.
But I did hear Sean Hinds singing the Shaggy tune. For sure many others would be singing this tune in the days ahead.
In the wake of the revelations by Sean Hinds, I now fully appreciate how tenuous life can be. All it takes is for someone with a dislike to spend some money and order that the source of the dislike be removed. There are too many willing agents.
And this makes things even scarier, because when Kaieteur News began to make its disclosures, people could have gone after the senior people.  Perhaps it is that the senior people had done so much good and helped so many that if indeed the plot was being hatched, the authors could find no takers.
During the crime wave that followed the 2002 Mash Day jailbreak there was a lot of contract killing. Many said that the intellectual author was Roger Khan but then again, there were others. Of that I am certain. Since then I was able to learn the names of some of the agents.
One of them, Sean Hinds, has come forward to say that he was on the side of the law, that the police sought his help. That is indeed a strange thing to say, knowing that the police force is an organization that only requires help with information. It turned out that he was correct, because when the dust settled, fingers were pointed at the then Home Affairs Minister.
Ronald Gajraj had access to state funds and it is said that he used these funds to help the cause. In the end he paid, because he can no longer go to the United States or any of the Western countries for that matter. Sean Hinds did not bother to talk about him, but he was quick to talk about one former policeman who has since been embroiled in a number of unsavoury situations.
Why is all this happening? People see the net closing in and they want to divorce themselves from whatever is coming. No one can say that the change in Government was not a most welcome thing, because all of a sudden one sees things that were swept under the rug.
We have the story of two men who paid themselves millions of dollars. For certain this would not have come to the fore and people would have been rolling in taxpayers’ money while the very taxpayer would have been struggling to make ends meet.
How could things have gone so wrong under a government that had vowed to serve all the people?

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