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Sean Hinds’ ménage à trois: Who killed Axel Williams?

Jul 29, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

On Sunday night, the Alliance For Change had a wake for one of its activists, Denise Walcott. I knew Denise as my student at UG, many, many moons ago. A pleasant human being if there was ever one. I did the unthinkable at Denise’s wake. I left the AFC building at 11.40 pm.
For years now, I have never been out in the night after 9 pm. During the election campaign, most nights I arrived home at midnight. When I spoke at Berbice meetings, I reached home at 2 am. But my physical protection was ensured.
I had every reason to avoid the coming of the night when I was out of my home before May 2015. An authoritarian state kills people.  The story of the Jagdeo Government is a sordid one. Violence was used against his critics. During the long years of Jagdeo’s terror, I met policemen who were blunt enough to tell you that they knew who sent the attackers against anti-government activists, but they would not risk their jobs to pursue an impartial investigation.
I remember the words of a detective at the Alberttown Police Station after I had endured the first attempt on my life when a miasmic substance was thrown on me.
Dale Andrews was present when the detective said; “Who am I going to talk to at NCN; that is a big place.” What happened is that the conspirators called NCN to inform them of the mischief so it could be reported as a news item. But they did so just a few minutes before it happened.
As I walked to my car, I got a call from Kaieteur News asking what had happened to me. Nothing happened, but right there and then as I entered my car, the substance was pelted at me. The detective was simply trying to tell us that he would not investigate a politically-directed act of violence.
Dictatorship and peace cannot co-exist. They are antithetical. Dictatorship dismisses the rule of law, assaults the laws of a country and silences its critics either through victimization, imprisonment or murder.
There are brave people who are prepared to confront authoritarian governments, but I believe they should not fall prey to bravado. They should be careful how they live their lives.
A businessman who was almost killed during the crime madness between 2002 and 2005, and who in turn resorted to the death squad to kill his attackers, came to see me at my mother-in-law’s supermarket during that period. He asked my mother-in-law where I was.
I was at the back of the supermarket and he came up behind me and called out my name. I spun around. When I saw who he was, fear took over my face. I felt trepidation because in my investigation of the crime syndrome in Buxton at the time, I received information on the attempt on his life and the role he played in helping the death squad. I had published that information.
He told me that once someone of his type wants to kill a person there is nowhere to hide. I will always remember those words. But why give your murderers the opportunity to kill you. Make it difficult for them. Don’t be out late without protection?
He wasn’t there to intimidate me, but to provide me with relevant information. Acting on his tips and clues, years later, I found out who killed Axel Williams, the man Sean Hinds said was his boss in the death squad. Williams was gunned down in a dark street in Bel Air Park.
Through this man I also found out that there were politicians in the corridors of power who had overlapping relations with both the death squad and the phantom group.
Sean Hinds made a neat separation between the death squad, phantom group and the police that faced the gunmen in Buxton during the crime syndrome. That is not correct.
There was no such separation.  Certain politicians brought elements of the three together. During his nightly stakeout on Good Hope on the East Coast using the so-called Leslie Ramsammy laptop, elements of the police, death squad and phantom group collaborated.   Also individuals within the three groups were distrustful of each other.
Does Sean Hinds know who killed his boss, Axel Williams? Does he know from which one of the three groups Williams’ murderer(s) came? Does he know who gave the order to execute Williams? I don’t think he knows. Hinds just took orders.
Understanding the complexities of the politics of the violent conspiracies was beyond him. I don’t think he will ever know unless there is a judicial investigation into what happened in Guyana between 2002 and 2005.

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