…Luncheon says ‘comprehensive disclosure’ needed
A “comprehensive response” to the alleged links between government and jailed Guyanese drug kingpin Roger Khan depends on “comprehensive disclosure,” according to Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon.
Asked by Stabroek News what the government intends to do about the continuing links being made between the Guyana government and Khan, Luncheon was adamant that the administration has “absolutely no intention” to become subject to “the cut and thrust of the media pronouncements, [and] media disclosures” on the issue.
“There should come a time when there is a comprehensive submission to the administration, or at least [until] we have in our hands something that is comprehensive. I suspect that will depend significantly on what comes out [or] what goes into the public domain of the engagements in New York. At that time, we would be in a much better position to respond,” Luncheon explained.
Khan is currently awaiting sentencing in the US after pleading guilty to trafficking in 150 kilos of cocaine into the US over a five-year period, from January 2001 to March 2006. He had claimed that he had worked closely with local and US law enforcement officials in crime fighting here. More recently, e-mail correspondence written by Khan’s former lawyer Robert Simels named Health Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy in relation to Khan’s training in the operation of spy equipment used here. Dr Ramsammy, however, denied knowing anything of the claims.
“The comprehensive response depends on the comprehensive disclosure of all that information that is being made available piecemeal-and not in any mischievous way but just being made available in a piecemeal fashion. We are not going to be responsive to that,” Luncheon added. In the interim, he noted that the press is “making interesting reading” and that the government would continue making its own observations. “But until then [full disclosure], we would not be in a position to respond,” he added.
The US government has said Khan was leader of a Georgetown-based cocaine trafficking organisation, which was backed by a “paramilitary squad that would murder, threaten, and intimidate” others at his directive. The organisation imported large quantities of cocaine into Guyana, which was then shipped to the Eastern District of New York and other places for distribution. The US government said Khan’s enforcers committed violent acts and murders on Khan’s orders that were directly in furtherance of his drug trafficking conspiracy. The paramilitary squad was referred to as the “Phantom Squad,” which a confidential US source said was responsible for “at least 200 extra-judicial killings” in Guyana between 2002 and 2006.