IPS-English GUYANA: Officials Implicated in Death Squad Scandal
 
Date: Tue, 20 May 2008 10:58:08 -0700

 
Bert Wilkinson

GEORGETOWN, May 26  (IPS)  - Neither party has ever sought to hide
their highly interlinked relationship, based to a large extent on
symbiosis and mutual convenience.

Almost two years to the month after U.S. federal marshals arrested
him in Trinidad and put him on a northbound U.S. government plane
to face trial in New York for alleged international narco-trafficking,
accused -- and self-avowed -- private hit squad founder Shaheed Roger
Khan is to be investigated at home for nearly 200 murders he allegedly
committed during a five-year killing spree at the height of his operations
in Guyana, U.S. federal and local officials said this week.

Khan, 38, is awaiting the start of his felony trial in a New York
District Court in October, but it is the evidence that is coming out
of pretrial hearings that has stunned this small English-speaking
South American nation of 730,000.

In 2002, five men broke out of the main maximum security prison in
the capital, armed themselves with AK-47 rifles, formed a huge gang
and began an unprecedented reign of terror, robbing businesses, engaging
in spectacular shootouts with police, and assassinating 27 law enforcement
officers in two years.

It was easily the worst crime spree the nation had ever seen. Before
then, 50 murders a year were front page news, but the total from 2002
to 2003 shot up to 410, alarming everyone in the former British colony
that is home to the 15-member Caribbean Community bloc.

With police and the military demoralised by the killings and the
sheer fearlessness of gang members, even the government had publicly
conceded it was at a loss to deal with the situation.

In stepped Khan, who jumped bail in the U.S. state of Vermont on
felony gun charges, allegedly offering and winning acceptance of his
assistance to authorities by forming small groups of ex-police and
soldiers in a private death squad. The squad would then hunt down
and kill gang members using high-tech mobile telephone tracking devices
to triangulate the position of gang members and take them out. Police
and the state turned a blind eye.

As federal prosecutors and Khan's defence team exchange arguments
at pretrial hearings, evidence is beginning to emerge that the private
hit squad might have murdered about 200 people during the period.

Just this week, the police department announced plans to ask the
U.S. State Department to furnish it with evidence that would help
detectives crack open a slew of cold cases, many of them drive-by
shootings, or abductions that led to executions and burials at remote
spots.

In many of the cases, petty thieves were simply wiped out as the
killing net widened to include them. Assassins were paid anything
from 200 to 500 dollars per hit. The police, of course, have not escaped
public wrath for not attempting to investigate the executions on their
own, only moving to reopen cases because of the overwhelming evidence
flowing south from New York.

”We always knew there was a death squad in operation that had the
protection of the state,” said Marissa Ramsammy as she shopped in
a municipal market this week. ”It will be interesting to see what
more comes out from America. I can't wait for more.”

The police let on about plans to probe the murders in a rather terse
statement from headquarters that indicated that it had reached a point
where the evidence could no longer be ignored -- details about who
was murdered by whom, where and why are being laid bare in unsealed
documents published by local media houses.

”Consequent upon media reports about murders committed by Shaheed
Roger Khan in Guyana prior to his incarceration in the United States,
the Guyana Police Force has requested of the U.S. Embassy in Guyana
any information in the possession of the U.S. Authorities in relation
to the murders,” the brief statement said.

No one is betting that the State Department will make any real effort
to get the details for local authorities, as it has made its position
clear in the past that officialdom is much too corrupted by organised
crime and family links with government officials. The U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) has refused requests from authorities to open
an office here, saying the country is not secure enough for agents
to operate. It services Guyana from neighbouring Trinidad and is now
contemplating setting up shop in Suriname -- anywhere but Guyana.

For its part, U.S. Embassy spokesman Rolf Olson said the mission
will certainly pass on the requests. ”We have received the official
request from Commissioner Henry Greene and we have forwarded it to
Washington for consideration. That is all we have to say for at the
moment,” he said.

As an indication of how Washington has viewed events in Guyana, it
cancelled travel visas for a number of people involved, including
Minister Gajraj and then police chief Floyd McDonald and his family
-- the most notable of those either allegedly involved or who had
turned a blind eye to operations of the death squad.

At least three suspected members of the squad were tried and acquitted
of murder charges in 2004, largely because the main whistleblower
was shot dead the day before he was due to testify against them.

Defence attorneys for Khan are due in Guyana shortly to depose witnesses
on his behalf, but the U.S. Embassy has already hinted that no travel
visas will be issued to them, creating problems for the defence. Gajraj
had said publicly before being spirited off to India as Guyana's envoy
that he would ”do it all over again” as the police and the military
were afraid to take on gangsters. President Bharrat Jagdeo has also
made similar remarks.



*****
+ CARIBBEAN: Crime Wave Spills Across Borders (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41579)
+ CARIBBEAN: Regional Security Takes Centre-Stage (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41891)
+ GUYANA: Nation Stunned by Savage Killings (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40981)


(END/IPS/CA/NA/IP/HD/BW/KS/08)


 
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