Freddie Kissoon tells Lindo Creek COI… Arokium told me he has proof Joint Services killed Lindo Creek miners

Mar 10, 2018 News

---

-individual told Jagdeo of Fine Man gang’s location in exchange for “ very valuable favour”
Columnist and political activist, Frederick Kissoon, yesterday recalled the night that miner Leonard Arokium told him he had proof that the Joint Services, and not the ‘Fine Man’ gang, had slaughtered his son and seven of his crew at Lindo Creek in June 2008.
Kissoon also said that Arokium showed him maps of the area that made him conclude, like Arokium, that it was “logistically impossible” for Rondell ‘Fine Man’ Rawlins and his men to have crossed from Christmas Falls to Lindo Creek to kill and burn the miners, knowing that an elite Joint Services squad was hot on their trail.
In riveting testimony yesterday, the Kaieteur News columnist also said that he had “direct information” that an individual who “had nurtured” the ‘Fine Man gang’ told then president, Bharrat Jagdeo, of the gang’s location, in exchange for “a very valuable favour.”
Kissoon, who was also a University of Guyana lecturer, told the Commission that due to his public profile, people would seek him out “with information that concerns them and the country’s national interest.”
He said that in June 2008, he received a message, via Kaieteur News, that Leonard Arokium wanted to speak to him.
“He subsequently called around seven p.m. and he wanted to speak to me right away. He sounded urgent and he wanted to meet me.”
Kissoon said that he arranged to meet Mr. Arokium “in what I considered to be safe quarters,” which was the Catholic Standard headquarters.
Mr. Arokium and two others eventually arrived, and they spoke in the presence of Catholic Standard Editor, Colin Smith.
“He said two of his sons and his employers were killed, he believed, by the security forces, and that the security forces were covering up the matter, and that he would like my intervention as a media operative,” Kissoon added, under questioning by COI Chairman Justice Donald Trotman and attorney, Patrice Henry.
COI attorney, Patrice Henry: “And was he (Arokium) able to demonstrate to you how he arrived at that conclusion?”
Kissoon: “Yes. He came armed with a series of maps, documents and a number of photographs of burnt bodies, and remnants of burnt foodstuff…Then he went on to explain, why he thought that the security forces did kill his camp employees and his two sons. He said: ‘I have proof that the security forces killed my camp employees and not the ‘Fine Man’ gang, and I need this to be publicised.’
“He laid out the maps on the table to show the demography and the geographical terrain and he began to take us through the journey of if you are at ‘A’ point, how you would get to ‘B’ point. He continued that meticulously, juxtaposing his movements…with the police explanation as to how his employees and two sons met their death.
“I would say that it was an extensive, meticulous explanation of cartography.”
Kissoon identified Christmas Falls, the UNAMCO area and Lindo Creek among areas that Mr. Arokium pointed out on the maps.
COI attorney, Patrice Henry: “Can you say if he mentioned to you how the terrain was made up?
Kissoon: “I think the essential point he wanted to get over was that it was logistically impossible for the ‘Fine man’ gang to have crossed over from Christmas Falls to Lindo Creek to kill his camp employees and his two sons, based on the fact that they were being pursued by the security forces, and then he took us through the journey with explanations and questions being asked by me.”
The Kaieteur News columnist also said that he knew how “the government of the day,” got to know that the Rawlins gang was at Christmas Falls.
“I had direct information that someone connected intricately and logistically to the gang had directly given that information to President Jagdeo.
“The person was more than just close to the ‘Fine Man’ gang. He was one of the persons who nurtured the gang, provided logistic support to the gang. I don’t think he was a friend of the President (Jagdeo).
“He wanted something from the state and the President that was vital to his life and he made his choice. He was facilitated by a close aide of the president, to meet with the president, and he gave the president that information. It was immediately after that the joint squad went to Christmas Falls,” Kissoon told the Commission.
”That person (the informant) gave the President (Jagdeo) that information in order to receive a very valuable favour in return, which he got.”
“I thought it strange and unnerving that the police explanation is that the ‘Fine Man’ gang crossed over to Christmas Falls, and killed the miners, because they (the miners) had told the security forces where the ‘Fine Man’ gang was located.
“Almost a decade after, I don’t believe that; not based on the information I had first hand as to who was the person who gave the President (Jagdeo) that information of the whereabouts of the ‘Fine man’ gang.”
The columnist also recalled working with the late Kaieteur News journalist, Dale Andrews, on a series of articles related to the Lindo Creek massacre. This work entailed speaking to members of the Guyana Police Force, “who were not part of the elite squad that pursued the ‘Fine Man’ gang.
Speaking about other sources that he contacted during his investigations, Kissoon said that he also spoke to some army and police personnel.
“Based on Arokium’s explanations, descriptions and analyses, I put that (information) together. I have done journalistic investigation for 30 years, and if there is any story that I have investigated and come to the conclusion as to what happened, I would say, definitively…that the ‘Fine man’ gang could not, with the security forces pursuing them, have gone from Christmas Falls, through what was called ‘the gate’, which was a passage that leads to the Lindo Creek Mine. It was a geographical impossibility,” Kissoon said.
“We (Kissoon) took the angle of the police statements on the Lindo Creek massacre but that just did not make sense to us.
“There is a limitation to human endurance, and that was the factor in the mind of the journalist when he investigated Lindo Creek. Could humans achieve that kind of physical feat, going over mountainous terrain, crossing rivers and doing that with ease, when the police were after you, you kill people, burn their bodies burn their foodstuff, and you have an elite squad after you (that) killed one of your members?”
In responding to a query by Justice Trotman, Kissoon said that because he had studied maps of the area, “and the logistics and the total example of events,” he did not think that it necessary to have visited the Lindo Creek site, as an important part of his investigation.
“It would have been an advantage, but I don’t think it would have led me to any other conclusion.”
Asked why he had done no interviews with members of the Guyana Defence Force, Kissoon said that the army had “an elite contingent” that was attached to the squad that went to Christmas Falls.
He said that from the “cursory examinations” that he made, most of the GDF personnel he spoke to knew nothing about the operations of this squad.
“The conclusion that I came to was that the army contingent in the Joint Squad that was pursuing criminals in that period was a very secretive, closed door elite squad that you couldn’t get much information on. I had confidential sources in the police force; I didn’t have that in the army.”
‘I knew the individual who led the squad was an army officer, (but) I just knew his last name.”
The Kaieteur News columnist said that Mr. Arokium contacted him several times after the first interview. Once, the miner said that someone was using his slain son’s phone.
Kissoon said he had tried to get a response from Commissioner of Police Henry Greene, but got none.
The public hearings into the Lindo Creek killings will continue next Tuesday.

---

---