Georgetown Mayor Hamilton Green has called “sinister” sentences inserted into a statement that he gave Police on Saturday as investigations into utterances made at a mayoral press conference continue.
Refusing to sign the statement read back to him after the suspicious insertions, the Mayor is afraid that some mischief might be afoot.
The investigations surround statements that ex-army officer Oliver Hinckson made at a Mayor and City Council (M&CC) press conference on February 1, 2008.
Speaking to this newspaper yesterday, Green said that the attempt to insert statements that he didn’t make suggests something sinister on the part of the police ranks. Green said that the statement read back to him by the Police had an insertion concerning the Lusignan killings and President Bharrat Jagdeo, something he is insisting that he never uttered to the Police. On that basis he refused to sign it, he said.
“I never said anything about the President and Lusignan. I kept to the press conference,” he said. “If this is the way that the Police conduct their investigation then God help us,” he said.
According to Green, the Police seem to have been using statements that he made at a commemoration of Ronald Waddell’s assassination in Buxton some time ago to incriminate him.
Green said that on Saturday, he was implored by a senior officer of the Guyana Police Force to visit Police Headquarters, after his initial refusal to do so on the advice of his lawyers on Friday.
Green said that he arrived at Police Headquarters since he didn’t want it to appear that he was being uncooperative with the Police.
He said he related that on the day of the press conference Hinckson had come to look after a tax issue with the Council and upon seeing the media he asked to make a statement which the Mayor said he allowed.
Hinckson said at the press conference that he and other ex-servicemen were prepared to venture into Buxton and risk their lives to intercede between the Government and the disenchanted, “fully knowing that we do not have a tacit hand or an actual hand in any kind of mischief.
“I didn’t hear anything seditious,” the Mayor said, after he had listened to Hinckson’s speech. Hinckson’s lawyers have also concluded that the statements were not seditious. Hinckson and ex-army officer Dorian Massey were arrested and taken into custody on Wednesday morning.
Mayor Green is incensed that Police ranks have also visited the office of the Mayor’s public relations unit asking to see the media invitation for the press conference on February 1.
