Dear Editor,
I have an aversion to responding to feature articles written under pseudonyms, such as ‘Peeping Tom’, but I will take exception to the one titled, “Let’s have a full, not a limited enquiry,” (KN, June 18), if only because of the gravity of the issue under discussion.
The writer pretends to support the AFC’s call on the UN to help launch a probe into Roger Khan’s Phantom Squad operations that allegedly claimed 200 lives, but really seeks to negate the impact such a probe can have on the Bharrat Jagdeo regime for apparently ‘facilitating’ the squad’s extra judicial activities, by suggesting the probe be expanded to include the dangerous criminal spree that preceded the Phantom Squad.
Let’s be frank about one thing: we seem to have more damning evidence against Khan and his gang, which seemed to have a dotted line relationship to the PPP regime, than we seem to have linking loosely knitted criminal groups and the PNC. This does not mean the PNC should be absolved of links, but despite repeated charges by the Government, neither it nor the Police has tendered a shred of credible evidence to substantiate the charges linking the PNC to dangerous criminals.
Without hard criminal evidence or even credible witnesses, such as those armed criminals who have killed by the Joint Services, how can there be a probe of the criminal gangs? Government keeps shooting itself in the foot when criminals are killed and not arrested! We’ve recovered some of the AK-47s, but no criminal alive to talk about them!
What evidence do we have so far against Khan? While fleeing the Joint Services en route to Suriname, Khan himself unveiled his role fighting dangerous criminals.
The US authorities went one step farther recently and revealed his gang could have been responsible for about 200 deaths.
Six years ago he was caught with a powerful eavesdropping device that can only be purchased and imported into a country based on approval of a government. It was confiscated and then reissued for private use in bugging the phones of the then top cop and a PNC official. Khan’s lawyers went one step farther and revealed the device was purchased in Florida, leading concerned Guyanese to ask, who in the Jagdeo regime placed their signature on a government letter head and authorized the purchase of this device?
While the US authorities are looking to try Khan for conspiring to smuggle narcotics out of Guyana to America, the preliminary process is opening up a Pandora’s Box of information that is embarrassing to the Jagdeo regime, because even if the regime denies knowledge of Khan’s alleged narcotics activities, how can it extend its denial to include Khan’s extra judicial links and possession or use of the eavesdropping device? Based on evidence so far, how can he be treated like he was a ghost in Guyana?
The little bit of information we have so far on Khan is enough to demand that the Government re-appoints the Phantom Squad Commission to re-open its probe of Mr. Ronald Gajraj, and invite former acting top cop, Mr. Floyd McDonald to answer tough questions about Khan’s allegations that he used cops on the GPF payroll to help deal with criminals, and how he came to be in possession of the eavesdropping device.
If the Government fails to do this, it has every reason to fear that more damaging information could surface if and when the Khan case gets underway in New York. So far, its credibility has taken a severe beating, and no matter how much it tries to keep in the public’s view its vigorous search for the apprehension of ‘Fineman’ Rawlins and his gang, the Khan issue is going to survive this obvious attempt to distract from what seems to be more damaging than what ‘Fineman’ Rawlings and his gang have done.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin,
Queens, New York
