The police attempted to arrest Mark Benschop yesterday over the publication of documents they said were stolen from the Office of the President (OP), leading him to accuse the state of persistent harassment.
Four plainclothes police officers turned up at Benschop’s office just after 4 pm, and his refusal to cooperate triggered a lengthy stand-off. The officers made it clear that they were not leaving without him and Benschop maintained that if any questions were to be asked, the police had to speak with him at his East Street office.
Benschop said the police informed him that stolen invoices from the OP have appeared on his guyanaobservernews.org website and he was wanted for questioning at police headquarters. “I’m not going anywhere for any questioning,
you’re violating my rights by coming here and seeking to find out my source of information,” he told the officers. He was on the telephone with his lawyers within a few minutes and he promptly declared that he was not going anywhere.
The police issued a press release after 10 last night, saying an investigation is underway into the larceny of four flash drives/memory sticks valued $22,000 with vital documents from the Secretariat of the Permanent Secretary, Office of the President, on February 04, 2011.
The police said investigations have so far revealed that a female employee who was attached to the Secretariat of the Permanent Secretary entered the office on the day in question, and checks later revealed that the four flash drives with the documents were missing. Additionally, information had been deleted from the computers in the office.
The release did not name the employee, but former OP employee Marcelle Joseph was recently sacked for reportedly leaking information to the press. OP has since denied this claim, saying that her contract was terminated after she entered the Permanent Secretary’s Secretariat without permission and copied and tampered with records. Joseph has since fled to the US.
According to the police, the unnamed employee went to the guard room and uplifted the keys to the Secretariat from the guard, who unwittingly gave it to her, and she was subsequently observed entering the Secretariat by a number of other employees and members of the Presidential Guard.
The release said that she has not been seen since. “Some of the documents have been surfacing on a particular website, guyanaobservernews.org, and the police have been interviewing persons concerned with the production of the website. Mark Benschop was today contacted by the police and has denied ownership of the website and knowledge of articles posted on the website,” the release added.
Speaking with reporters while the officers tried to get him to cooperate, Benschop said the episode was worrying and stressed that the police have no jurisdiction over what is published on his website. “I think this is a violation of my rights, I am not employee of OP and the documents they are talking about ought to be public documents,” he said.
Benschop said he was under no obligation to reveal his sources and he made reference to Joseph, saying she was a target only recently. “I’m not going to accept this!” he said.
Benschop questioned what was so top secret about the invoices which appeared on the website, saying that if Pentagon Papers could be published, then the OP documents ought to be made public—a reference to a study on the US/Vietnam relations which succeeded in substantially eroding public support for the Vietnam War after they were released.
He argued that the government has secrets which it is afraid would be exposed “in time” and he emphasized that he was being targeted. Benschop said the incident annoyed him, particularly after his recent incident at Diamond with OP Press and Publicity Officer Kwame McCoy was not being properly investigated.
“I’m the publisher of an online publication and my job is to feed the public with the information they need, regardless of where I get that information from…where I get those documents from is none of the Guyana Police Force business and none of the government business,” he stressed. Benschop later telephoned attorney and AFC presiden-tial candidate Khemraj Ramjattan, who spoke with the officers via speak phone. Ramjattan criticized the move, saying that no grounds were laid out for an arrest and that the police’s approach was tantamount to interrogation. “You don’t have to tell them where you get the information from,” Ramjattan said. Ramjattan questioned whether Benschop was Julian Assange from Wilileaks, adding that if Benschop has not committed any known offence then the police had no right to arrest him. He asked if the information was on his party’s website whether the police would have attempted to arrest party officials. Ramjattan asked to speak with the lead detective but the officer refused.
Benschop then asked the police to leave his premises and after a short while the police decided to question him on the premises.
He was asked whether he owns the website and if he is a regular contributor.
