It is not often that the police get big breaks in sensational murder cases that allow them to make arrests, lay charges and present formidable evidence in the courts. The police force has progressively lost investigative acumen over the years so when an opening comes along it boggles the mind that it isn’t seized with both hands and steered to finality.
And that is the case with the disturbing information that has emerged in relation to the phone which was in the possession of Dax Arokium at the time he and seven others were murdered at Lindo Creek. The massacre at Lindo Creek in June was just as heinous and bloodcurdling as those at Lusignan on January 26 and at Bartica on February 17. More sinister were the concerns that the massacre at Lindo Creek had nothing to do with `Fineman’ Rawlins and his gang but was executed by rogue elements of the joint services.
The `Fineman’ line has been one assiduously reeled out by the government and its spokespersons and the tightly controlled police force is not necessarily going to extend itself to investigate any clues which would expose this well-choreographed explanation.
That is not to say that the discovery of the phone and calls made on it in August rules out the possibility that `Fineman’ could have had something to do with the Lindo Creek murders. It just means there is a bit more investigating to do. Investigating that could gravitate towards the ultimate truth. It would be wise for each and every Guyanese to reflect on an indisputable truth: thus far not a sliver of convincing evidence has been presented to the public which ties anyone to any of the three massacres this year – and certainly none of the masterminds and the intellectual authors. Some people have been charged but they all appear to be extras in these acts of numbing terror and bloodshed.
The essential truth about the instrument and number assigned to Dax Arokium is that it has now followed the perpetrators. This newspaper has reported that there was a call from Dax Arokium to a friend on June 5 as he was proceeding to Lindo Creek. This was around when the killings are believed to have occurred and the bodies burnt. It means that the instrument would have been at Lindo Creek when the slaughter occurred. How it came to be in Linden in the months after is an important clue as to the perpetrators. Why have the police and the government been so cavalier about this? The police, apparently not keen to delve too deeply into this, issued a press release noting that the number given to them by Dax’s father Leonard Arokium was not assigned to Dax. It was quickly established by Leonard Arokium that this was because his passport had expired and a sales girl at the Digicel office obliged him by affixing her name to the sale.
That out of the way where is the exhaustive and painstaking work by the police on two fronts: piecing together the traffic linked to the phone from June onwards and tracking down the numbers it called and the calls that were placed to it. Surely this would be well in keeping with the tenor of the draconian `Big Brother’ wiretapping bill that the government has forced on the populace. Only in this case the information is readily available to the police once an application is made to the phone company. Secondly, why hasn’t there been intense questioning of the persons who have been linked to the instrument. The explanation that the instrument was `found’ doesn’t ring true especially since the phone was reputedly in a battered state. Moreover, the reply to a call by one of Dax Arokium’s puzzled friends that “Soldier man ent deh” was startling in light of the allegation by Leonard Arokium that soldiers were involved in the massacre. The police seem conveniently to have bought the explanation from those who had possession of the phone but the general public would not be similarly assuaged.
From the outset, it had been argued that independent experts be brought in to investigate every facet of the Lindo Creek massacre in light of the accusations against the joint services. The government declined because it clearly didn’t want to lose control of the investigation. This stance will however not impress those who understand the dangerous implications of what possibly transpired at Lindo Creek. Are the police clueless or are they simply ignoring the leads from Lindo Creek that come their way?
While he was alive, Rawlins and his gang became a coverall for the government and the police force in relation to crime even though there were holes in the cases that trucks could be driven through. New explanations will have to be hurriedly put together on who the new bandits are and why the police still seem so inept. Friday’s night’s assault on a minibus on the Linden-Soesdyke highway in a carefully planned operation by two carloads of men will begin to ask new questions. What will the government and the police now say about this and the Arokium phone?
