-refuses to take questions
Police Commissioner Henry Greene called out the media yesterday to produce a laptop computer and receiver which he said was seized from confessed drug trafficker Roger Khan in 2002, but provided no evidence to prove that the equipment in the possession of the force is that which Khan was operating here.
The Top Cop, who openly distanced himself from the seizure and by extension the investigation declaring that he was not in charge in 2002, refused to take any questions on the equipment. He swiftly left what had been billed as a press conference after reading a terse statement.
“I was nowhere there. I may have just come back from studying in TT, I may not be able to answer you”, Greene said.
“You bear the burden and you also bear the blessing and therefore once you take the seat you have to bear whatever goes with the seat, I have no difficulty with that”, he told reporters, yet he would field no questions.
The equipment which includes a Panasonic Toughbook laptop and a receiver serial no.CSM 7806 was put on display at Police Headquarters yesterday, but the police offered no demonstration as to how it operates. They would only say that it was the electronic equipment which was lodged with the force by Superintendent F. Caesar following the seizure seven years ago along with accessories.
By unveiling the equipment and dodging obvious questions observers have pointed out that the force might be in possession of equipment which was switched.
Contrastingly, the US government has not only produced the spy equipment in court which it said belongs to Khan, but has offered more persuasive evidence. The government produced the surveillance device and its operational software, and two laptop computers on which the software had been installed, and testimony from the UK manufacturer identifying the equipment as that which was sold to Khan.
The US government has said it seized the surveillance equipment owned by Khan after it was shipped to his lawyer’s New York office. FedEx Operations Manager in New York, Manny Mancuso has also testified both in direct testimony and under cross-examination in a US court that his company had shipped from Guyana to Robert Simels’s NY office, items listed as documents, Panasonic laptops, an Auto Data Recording Device, a computer base power supply and a flash drive.
Greene referred to the US trial of former Roger Khan attorney, Simels saying that “an equipment has been part of the focus of that trial”. He said that his purpose at the forum yesterday was not to associate himself with the trial, but to speak on what he took over when he became the acting commissioner on July 24, 2006.
Greene acknowledged the Simels trial which is ongoing in the US has been attracting attention in the local media as well as attracting the attention of many Guyanese “who are interested in what is taking place in that court”.
He said also that there has been lots of speculation of alignment, finger-pointing, blame and a number of other things. “I have been bombarded by many reporters who continue to ask questions about equipment which the force seized from Shaheed Khan who is incarcerated in the US”, he added.
Peter Myers, who co-founded the firm, testified under oath in a New York court that the intercept equipment which ended up in Khan’s hands, including an intercept receiver and two laptops, was sold by the company’s Florida sales office through the Fort Lauderdale-based Spy Shop to the Government of Guyana- a claim the administration has repeatedly denied.
The intercept receiver Myers said was identified as the CSM 7806 as well as two “TOUGHBOOK” Laptops, a small one and a larger one. He told the court both in direct evidence and during cross-examination that the only things missing from the equipment that was sold to Guyana were a USB cable and a small rubber antenna, both regular items that could be picked up at any electronic store. Myers, in his testimony, said that both laptops were working, while the intercept receiver had a minor power supply problem.
He explained that his company has manufactured such equipment to be sold to law enforcement agencies at a price of around roughly US$75,000. The equipment allows intelligence officers to intercept cellular phone calls using the receiver and the data can be sent by USB cable to the laptops where the numbers and the conversations/communication can be recorded onto the hard drive.
Myers was shown the operating software CD and he identified it as belonging to his company and stated that the software would have accompanied the equipment sale. He further identified printouts and photographs of the two “Toughbook” laptops and confirmed them as the company’s operating systems.
Meanwhile, lengthy lists of Guyana telephone numbers gleaned from the spy equipment with target names like “Fineman” next to some of them were shown to the court. Among the numbers, were one allegedly assigned to dead fugitive Rondell “Fineman” Rawlins and another belonging to opposition leader Robert Corbin. The sheets of numbers were entered into evidence and are available as part of the case docket.
Greene had maintained that local law enforcement was in possession of the equipment seized from Khan, and when asked what the force was going to do with the equipment and why it had not been used to track some of Khan’s former associates, he had said it would be “used as evidence.” This was the first time in seven years it had been put on display, a sign of the mounting pressure on the government and the police force as a result of the New York trial.
The surveillance equipment was confiscated from Khan when he was arrested in 2002 and handed over to the government. It was allegedly then passed back to Khan at a later stage, while similar equipment was handed to the police under the guise that it was what was originally seized. This newspaper was also later informed that the equipment could not have been turned on and it was basically a laptop and there was no way the police could have ascertained if it indeed worked.
At one time the army had said that it had turned over the equipment to the police but the police later indicated it did not know of its whereabouts.
Switched?
Cabinet Secretary Dr. Roger Luncheon had previously addressed questions about the equipment in the police’s possession saying that he was sure that the Commissioner has evidence to prove that it was the real thing.
However, he did not entirely dismiss the idea that the equipment could have been switched and the one in the US is the real one.
“I think it is a routine matter in satisfying ourselves that this piece of evidence remains the same evidence. The whole thing that it could have been switched and all of these different things, you can’t dispense with that because apparently there is a piece of equipment that has surfaced as the seized equipment. To my mind it is only the police would be in a position to pronounce [today], which they have, and to have the courts verify when it is presented as evidence that indeed that which was seized and given some way of recognition is precisely what is before the court”, Luncheon said then.
Dr Luncheon, who is also secretary of the Defence Board, told Stabroek News then that should the equipment be produced in a US court as evidence then prosecutors would have to tell the court that it was indeed the very equipment that was seized from a vehicle in which Khan and others were at Good Hope, East Coast Demerara.
In December 2002, an army patrol discovered the sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment and arms in a pick-up that Khan, Haroon Yahya and policeman Sean Belfield were in at Good Hope, on the East Coast Demerara. Khan and his cohorts had told law enforcement officials at the time that they were in search of Shawn Brown and the other February 2002 Camp Street prison escapees.