‘Our investigations have definitively indicated that Fineman and his gang are responsible for the murder of the miners’ – Crime Chief Seelall Persaud
The Guyana Police Force has “definitively” concluded that slain fugitive Rondell ‘Fineman’ Rawlins and his marauding gang were responsible for the gruesome killing of the eight miners at Lindo Creek, while relatives, left with only charred remains, still try to find closure one year after.
“Our investigations have definitively indicated that Fineman and his gang are the persons responsible for the murder of the Lindo Creek miners,” Crime Chief Seelall Persaud told Stabroek News recently, when asked about the investigation into the massacre. Stressing the point, Persaud said that all the evidence suggests that it was ‘Fineman’ and his cohorts who slaughtered the men.
However, Persaud’s words are likely to be of little comfort to the relatives of Bonny Harry, Dax Arokium, Cecil Arokium, Clifton Wong, Nigel Torres, Compton Speirs, Horace Drakes and Lancelot Lee, whose burnt remains were found on June 21 last year at the Lindo Creek camp where they were mining for diamonds. After the miners were killed, their bodies and belongings were burnt and no trace of diamonds was found, although it was clear that they had completed a ‘wash down.’
There are still many unanswered questions and the recent disclosure by Stabroek News that some of the burnt remains of the men are still at Lindo Creek raises concern about the thoroughness of the police investigation.
From the onset, the police force has always maintained that it was Rawlins and his gang members who were responsible, although owner of the campsite Leonard Arokium, who lost both his son and brother, accused members of the joint services of killing the men–a charge the police and the army have vehemently denied.
While some relatives are still depending on the DNA testing of samples taken by a Jamaican forensic team last August, complete results have been long in coming.
Closure
The wife of one of the dead miners recently told Stabroek News that she no longer cared about who murdered her husband because he is already dead and her only care is to bury something for him. “It is hard but if they could give something, just some bones I want to bury something for my husband that would be my closure. But look how long they take the tests and nothing yet,” the woman told this newspaper.
In December, Police Commission-er Henry Greene said partial results of the DNA tests had confirmed that at least one of the men had died at the location. He would not say, however, which one of the victims had been identified. The rest of the results may not come anytime soon as a few weeks ago, Deputy Commissioner of Police of Jamaica Charles Scarlett suggested that the results would take some time, since Jamaica’s forensic lab was in for “special treatment.” He was unable to comment specifically about the Lindo Creek case but promised to look into the matter and then pass on a report to Commissioner Greene.
However, Persaud said the force is awaiting the DNA results to close their investigation and send the file to the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) for legal advice. He could not say how much longer police might have to wait but he said they not only expected to get the results but also an “analytical report” from the Jamaicans to add to their investigation. “When the results and the report are back we would send the file for legal advice and based on what advice we get we may have to do further investigations. When we hear from the Jamaicans we would package what we have and send for advice,” Persaud told this newspaper.
Persaud would not comment on an eyewitness whom Commissioner Greene had said the police had in their custody. The witness, it is claimed, identified Rawlins and his gang as being responsible for the deaths of the miners.
He advised Stabroek News to make contact with Greene; however, months after his disclosure Greene would only say that the person is around but would give no further details.
Leonard Arokium had challenged the police to produce the eyewitness but to date there is no other information on the person who allegedly witnessed the eight men being slaughtered.
According to a Kaieteur News report, Greene had said the eyewitness had given the police a detailed account of what transpired at the camp. He reported that eyewitness had said that the men were attacked by Rawlins and his gang. “They went there the night. Basically, they attacked the men. They tied them up, they cooked etcetera, then the next night they were shot and killed,” the commissioner was quoted as saying.
And while the police are just waiting for those results from Jamaica to conclude their investigation there is no word about their investigations into the use of two cellular phones belonging to two of the dead miners that were reportedly on their persons at the time of their death.
Women on the bus
In one of their more detailed statements on the incident, the police had said a man claiming to be the notorious ‘Fineman’ had told two women on a bus hijacked on the Aroaima trail in June last year that he had killed “nine persons” at Lindo Creek and burnt their bodies. This was not the first time the issue of nine persons being at the campsite at the time was raised and only recently Stabroek News reported that a man had said he witnessed what happened at Lindo Creek and that he wanted residents of Berbice River to help him get an audience with the President Bharrat Jagdeo.
The residents to whom the man has spoken had told Stabroek News that he has abandoned his home out of fear and currently moves from place to place as he has no fixed place of abode. They had said he had been saying the same thing since last June, soon after the incident occurred, and that back then he had even gone to the police in the area, but they did not believe him and ran him off, warning him not to repeat what he was saying to anyone.
According to the residents, who are also still fearful, the man had said he wanted to be able to meet President Jagdeo in a public setting to tell his story, so that “if they kill me there, the world know.”
The police statement was in response to comments made by some relatives of the dead miners after they had given DNA samples for testing last August. At the time, they expressed the view that the joint services had been involved in killing the miners at Lindo creek. The police, however, criticised them for making “statements which have no evidential or factual basis” rather than waiting on the findings of the ongoing investigations.
Additionally, the police said Leonard Arokium had not produced one person to corroborate his claims, while noting that he cited several persons telling him different stories: the joint services killed the men at Lindo Creek; the Joint Services killed a cow and ate with members of the Arokium camp; and that the joint services ranks would usually transport these men from the UNAMCO road to the camp area.
However, police said the guards at the UNAMCO gate and the camp attendant at Number 69 mining camp were contacted and denied speaking to Arokium or telling him any of the stories he related.
The statement said that a woman who called Arokium from Kwakwani said that she had heard a rumour and told him so. “The investigators have unearthed evidence from two women who were on a bus that was hijacked by a man who allegedly called himself ‘Fineman’ along with others and who said that he had killed nine persons and burnt their bodies and the joint services could not see the smoke,” the statement explained. It added that subsequently the joint services encountered the gang at Goat Farm and two were killed. “They have been identified by persons who were on the bus that they were with the persons who hijacked the bus on the day in question along with the man who called himself ‘Fineman,’” it said.
Police had claimed they encountered Rawlins and his gang during a confrontation at Christmas Falls on June 6. They said that one of the gunmen was killed while six others managed to escape.
The eight miners were believed to have been murdered some time after this date.
Shortly after the confrontation, on June 16, a group of gunmen hijacked a busload of passengers on the Aroaima trail and disappeared. Police killed two gunmen subsequently at Goat Farm, located some 90 miles from Christmas Falls and arrested a teenager at Ituni.
The two men killed at Goat Farm were identified as Cecil Ramcharran called ‘Uncle Willie’ and Robin Chung called ‘Chung Boy’.
Police had earlier said that ballistics tests on the spent shells discovered at the Lindo Creek scene found that they matched one of the weapons that were recovered by the security forces following the confrontation at Goat Farm.
The police have never since explained how the gang would have moved 90 miles from the original confrontation with weapons and supplies when they were supposed to have been on the run.
The police have also not explained how since the joint services had control of the area there was no sign of smoke from the camp when the bodies were being burnt some time in June after the June 6 Christmas Falls shootout.
‘I am Bonny Harry’
Months after the burnt remains were found the relatives of two of the dead miners had reported that their cellular phones that were with them at Lindo Creek were still in use.
Bonny Harry’s brother, Eldon, had told Stabroek News that since his brother’s death he had frequently dialled the number and it always had gone straight to a voicemail recording with his brother’s voice. However, one day he dialled and a man with a funny sounding accent answered the phone and said: “I am Bonny Harry but I don’t speak English.” Eldon Harry said he had then asked the person his location and had been given the name of a hotel he said was in Brazil. “He give me the name of the hotel but to tell you the truth I can’t remember. I told him that I was coming to meet him and he said, ‘Okay,’ but I was just bluffing. There was a lot of noise like children in the background and then the phone cut off,” the man had related.
The report that Harry’s phone was in use had raised red flags after a similar report had been made about the phone that was in the possession of another dead miner, Dax Arokium. His phone was reactivated days after the burnt bodies of the miners were found. Several calls were reportedly made from that number telephone records have shown, and police later requested records from the phone company.
Moments before he left Kwakwani to go into Lindo Creek on the morning of June 5, 2008 Dax had called a friend asking for credit to be put on his cell phone account. The police subsequently said they had arrested three persons who might have knowledge “of a cell phone with a SIM card of a similar number” and they were being questioned. They were later released.
A promised investigation by the police into the use of the phones has so far yielded no results.