One of the soldiers who said he was pepper–sprayed and whipped with metal pipes by officers attached to the Military Criminal Investi-gation Department (MCID) now feels “betrayed by the government and the Guyana Defence Force (GDF)” for labelling the “horrifying experiences” he and his colleagues endured as mere roughing up.
“I don’t know what they call roughing up, but that wasn’t no rough up. I am a military person and I know what is torture. That was torture and I have the evidence on my body to show they tortured me,” Michael Dunn told Stabroek News when contacted.
The young man, who is still a serving member of the GDF, said he felt betrayed as he really thought that he and the others who had similar experiences would have had some kind of justice. He said he would now have to contact his lawyer and if he indicated that there was nothing more he could do, “then I would just have to leave it up to the father.
“I feel really upset, from inside right up. This thing really mess me up and now they are just saying it is just roughing up. I don’t know which evidence they looked at.”
Juliet Table, the grandmother of another soldier, said she was “shocked, annoyed and horrified” by the “roughing up” conclusion as she had observed the injuries inflicted on her grandson, Sharth Robertson.
“How could they say this? If you see what they did to my grandson, and now they saying it was just roughing up? They know what is roughing up?” the woman queried when this newspaper spoke to her. She said her grandson has since left the army, found another job and moved on with his life. “He wants nothing to do with the army, he served them and that is how they treat him. He has moved on.”
Dunn of Georgetown and Robertson of Berbice had said they were beaten, doused with cold water and in one case slashed across the heel with an iron pipe during interrogation over a missing AK-47.
The allegations by the two soldiers, another serviceman Alvin Wilson, coupled with those of civilians Patrick Sumner, Victor Jones, David Leander also known as David Zammett had resulted in a board of enquiry being set up to investigate.
At last Monday’s sitting of the National Assembly, Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud told the house that the Board of Inquiry found no evidence of torture. He said claims by some of the alleged victims were found to be false. He then added that the inquiry did find cases of “roughing up,” but then explained that in the light of the “new face of criminality” the security forces would use “a certain amount of physical and mental pressure” in order to get information. Such tactics, he insisted, did not fit the definition of torture. “To try to include these acts is to cheapen the definition of torture,” Persaud said.
‘Will not be
made public’
Meanwhile, at his weekly press conference on Friday, Head of the Presidential Secretariat (HPS), Dr Roger Luncheon, confirmed that the investigators only found cases of “roughing up”.
“The report went and even questioned… half of the allegations that were made, how indeed some of these injuries took place. When people try to escape and jump out windows and things like that, so there is substantial room for interpretation about the origin that is the causes of the injuries. And therefore although the term roughing up [has been used] it cannot be suspected, it cannot be said, it cannot be adduced that roughing up was the cause of everything that was seen. You can’t say that. I haven’t said that.”
Luncheon said the investigation was not a “hands-off investigation, I would be the first to concede that… it was no tea party. The questioning was aggressive and it is on that basis that the finding was that there was roughing up of those who alleged they had been tortured.”
Asked whether he felt the injuries seen on bodies of Sumner and Jones, both of whom had burn marks and other scars on their bodies, were self inflicted and not done by members of the army, Luncheon told the reporter that she had “lost him”.
And according to him, the long-awaited report on torture would not be made public as the government wanted to protect the members of the army against whom allegations were made. Luncheon said while information from the report would be made available from time to time, the full report would not be made available as the government would not want to make a contribution to the allegations by members of the Joint Services that the media had contributed to the murders of some of their colleagues.
The HPS alleged that in 2001, this newspaper and other members of the media contributed to the murders of members of the Customs Anti Narcotics Unit (CANU) and members of the police force by publishing their names and identifying them. “I could say that categorically because that is what the police and the CANU people said; put their faces in the newspapers and say this one is a CANU, this is one is a police…
“We are not going to release the report… You don’t know anything much but about governance. But I will tell you this, if the government says that it is a security matter… we are not going to imperil the lives… the image first of the joint services and the lives of the people. It is a decision that we have made and we are not going publish this report…”
Luncheon said the terms of reference for the Board of Inquiry (BOI) dealt with an investigation and findings and had nothing to do with recommendations.
‘No evidence?’
While the army colonel and two warrant officers, who headed the BOI, said in their report that there was no evidence of torture Dunn is questioning where they looked for the evidence as he has a “body of evidence” and he has photographed his injuries.
He said he gave a written statement to the BOI and he detailed what had happened to him. “This is really, really bad that they are saying that there was no torture. What they did to us and if we didn’t speak out people would not know they doing this to people. They saying that they just question you, this is not questioning is torture,” Dunn said.
Dunn said he felt the investigators are just “stifling their conscience, the facts are before them. They could see this man [himself] ent just make up anything and that he is talking the truth. They just trying to protect people.
“I can’t sit down and take this, I have to speak out because other people would go through more,” the man said.
He said that he felt GDF Chief of Staff, Commodore Gary Best, would have done something to give him justice more, so that he is still a serving member of the army.
He described his experience as one where he “reach to death’s door and come back.” The young soldier said that many nights he would jump out of his sleep in a panic, as he kept seeing the two officers approaching him with wet bags to place over his head. He said it was his mother who ensured that he got some rest, as he was a nervous wreck.
Dunn stressed that the experience was much worse because of the fact that it was done to him by the institution that he served and supported.
He posited that if the army and the members of the police force continue to “treat people like this then crime in this country can never ease because all them doing is pushing people more into crime.”
He said if they were soldiers had such experiences, he did not want to imagine the experiences of Jones and Summer, the two Buxtonians. In fact, Dunn said he was on the operation in Buxton when the men were picked up. They were later taken to Eve Leary but he is convinced that the two soldiers who tortured him were involved in the torturing of the two men.
Dunn said while the experience “almost mash up me career” he is still continuing to be a soldier because he likes being a soldier and it was what he always wanted to do. Further, he was also hesitant to venture out because he was not sure whether “the stain them put on me with gun and all them thing if people would still want to hire me, it will be really hard you know.”
‘Still there’
And Dunn said he sees the two army ranks who had tortured him regularly. “They are there in the same department nothing has happened to them I see them all the time. Just the other day one a them send with me squaddie to ask me if I alright. I don’t know why he asking me that.”
He related that initially he was not aware as to who was torturing him as they placed a wet bag over his head and tied another over his eyes. “But somehow the bag come off and the mistake them make is for me to see them face. I will never forget them. I know is who do them things to me.
“These men are still there laughing and talking, they should have been made to pay.”
He said there were some reports of the men losing their rank but that does not comfort him. “What can that do to me if they stripping them of their rank, then they must find that they do something so why now they just saying is roughing up.”
“Them had to do something and the government should have done something more for us we were tortured.
“If that is their decision then dog eat dog. They should have to pay me some money or something for my injuries. You know how much money my family had to spend on hospital…”
According to Dunn, he still has trouble with his left ear as it oozes and the doctor has told him there was nothing that could done about that injury.
And there are marks on his body caused by the electrical shocks that were inflicted on him by the two soldiers. He said the men threw acid on his body and sprayed pepper spray on his genitals. “Now tell me that is not torture? If I was not a strong man then I would never get back an erection but thank God I functioning as usual or there wouldn’t be no future. Which woman would want a man like that?”