Ex-President Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno of Panama Was, Why Not Bharrat Jagdeo, Ex-President of Guyana?

Jan 07, 2019 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I am initiating an enquiry titled: Ex-President Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno (Manuel Noriega) of Panama Was, Why Not Bharrat Jagdeo, Ex-President of Guyana? Such an enquiry has a punitive component as its conclusion.
Ex-president Manuel Noriega of Panama was arrested in his own country by orders of the president of the USA, extradited to the USA, charged and tried on eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering in April 1992.
(1). Why is ex-president Jagdeo at least, not taken before the courts and tried for his many alleged crimes and criminal associations, and associates?
According to Wikipedia reports:
“The 1988 Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations concluded: “The saga of Panama’s General Manuel Antonio Noriega represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures for the United States. Throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, Noriega was able to manipulate U.S. policy toward his country, while skilfully accumulating near-absolute power in Panama.
“It is clear that each U.S. government agency which had a relationship with Noriega turned a blind eye to his corruption and drug dealing, even as he was emerging as a key player on behalf of the Medellin Cartel (a member of which was notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar).”
“Noriega was allowed to establish “the hemisphere’s first ‘narcokleptocracy’”.[12] One of the large financial institutions that he was able to use to launder money was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), which was shut down at the end of the Cold War by the FBI. Noriega shared his cell with ex-BCCI executives in the facility known as “Club Fed”.
On the other hand Jagdeo’s alleged criminal associations are so far-reaching and alarming that it motivated a senior official of the Colin Powell State Department (DOS) to regard him as a “Mafia” Head of State.
Then US Ambassador to Guyana, Roland Bullen, in a 2006 cable to DOS stated that Guyana was believed to be “a narco-state” and that “If Guyana is a narco-state, then Khan is its leader” – An indication that Jagdeo was compromised and had surrendered governance of the country to Khan’s criminal enterprise.
(2). By Richard Millington, Research Assistant – George Washington University Law School
Jagdeo has offered facile denials of any association with Khan, which strain credulity. There is at least one tape, reportedly in the possession of US officials, which purportedly shows him meeting Khan.
Moreover, a Guyanese businessman informed US officials that on one occasion when he had an appointment with Jagdeo at Guyana’s Presidential Complex, he was made to wait for hours. He added that he was flabbergasted and got a stomach ache when he saw Jagdeo emerge from his office with Roger Khan.
The sight of the President meeting with the country’s most notorious criminal incensed him and forced him to relocate from Guyana.
Around 1999, Khan, at the urging of some members of Jagdeo’s regime, formed a gang nicknamed the “phantom death squad.” The phantom gang unleashed a reign of terror on the Guyanese nation. It received governmental support through Jagdeo’s then Minister of national security Ronald Gajraj.
Telephone records show Gajraj was in constant communication with gang leaders before and after major murders and executions. It was later discovered that Gajraj was the co-leader of the gang.
The phantom gang (a right-wing death squad) committed over four hundred murders for hire and executions of mostly young African Guyanese men. It is also responsible for hundreds of kidnappings, including that of a US diplomat.
The gang also assassinated then PPP Agriculture Minister Sash Sawh, as well as anti-PPP journalist Ronald Waddell. Sawh was locked in a bitter skirmish with Khan when he was killed.
Waddell, a television talk show host, believed Jagdeo governed by ethnic supremacy and was unrelentingly critical of the PPP’s association with Khan. Jagdeo had also accused him of forming an alliance with Buxtonians who were resistant to the PPP government
Phantom gang murder victim former Agriculture Minister Sash Sawh was a former Canadian citizen. Ronald Waddell was gunned down as he left his home in suburban Georgetown on January 30, 2006.
During Khan’s trial in a New York federal court, Selwyn Vaughn – a former associate of Khan turned DEA and FBI informant, testified under oath that Roger Khan ordered Waddell’s execution.
The source said that law enforcement officials had information that Khan had a personal relationship with Jagdeo. Following the raid Khan threatened to “bring down” Jagdeo and his government if they didn’t get Felix “off his back.” The source said that Khan then instructed Jagdeo to get rid of Felix.”
Within days of the operation, Khan, who had gone into hiding, published a full page ad in the Stabroek newspaper boasting of being head of the “phantom gang” and claimed he was “working in close association with the Jagdeo government to fight crime.”
In light of the above revelations where Jagdeo and Noriega seem to be birds of the same feather, a call for the immediate arrest and trial of ex- President Jagdeo is well overdue.
It is time that there should be Acknowledgement of the criminal involvements and responsibilities of ex-President Jagdeo as “a former Mafia Head of State” and of his collusion with others in making Guyana “a narco-state.”
Jesus Gonzales
1. Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia
2. By Richard Millington, Research Assistant – George Washington University Law School

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