The government was unaware that the Guyana Police Force had planned to go after convicted drug trafficker Roger Khan and his cohorts back in 2006 and was only told of the operation after it started, according to former commissioner of police Winston Felix who said he did not “want to fight the devil’s case in hell.
“They were told after the operation started that we were doing x and y,” Felix said in an exclusive interview with Stabroek News.
It was in March 2006 the police started targeting properties linked to Khan and his associates which led to Khan fleeing to Suriname after a wanted bulletin was issued for him. It was in Suriname that he was nabbed and later extradited to the US where he pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and is now serving a 15-year sentence.
According to Felix it was after the February 2006 Agricola massacre that he decided “firmly in my mind” to go after Khan. While not going into detail, Felix said his intelligence at the time indicated that Khan’s activities in the village triggered the brutal attack which left many dead, including an elderly couple.
He said the decision to mount the police operation was not influenced by the March 2006 US drug report which labelled Khan a “major” drug trafficker in Guyana.
And according to Felix, the police force was already two days into their operation before the Guyana Defence Force became involved.
“Two days after our operation started I was called and asked a question and we [the police and the army] took it from there.”
The army at that time had fingered Khan as being involved in the theft of the AK 47s from Camp Ayanganna in February of 2006.
“My operation was not based principally on the AKs; my operation was based on the national picture that I was seeing… There was heavy corruption of policemen, the literal buying out of policemen – that was one area. There was the use of policemen to protect this man and his business openly. Roger Khan himself was beating up people so it was a culmination of events that enough was springing out from this one man that the police force must show who is in control,” Felix said.
He said he could not stand the impunity of Khan’s actions on his watch.
Felix pointed out that it was also under his watch that the police operation commenced in Buxton independently.
“It was not to say I was principally looking at Roger Khan; I was looking at the national picture and bearing in mind my resources at different times I took different actions,” Felix said.
In the end Khan was not captured by local law enforcement but by those in Suriname, and Felix said he first received a phone call about the arrest and it was then he made contact with the Surinamese authorities.
Felix said while he was told after some time that Khan was not going to be charged in Suriname no indication came from the Surinamese that he would have been deported to Guyana.
“We did not hear what was going to happen to him until I heard he was in the United States having passed through Trinidad,” Felix said.
‘Unable to control’
“If I had not taken that course of action Roger Khan would have still been here and I doubt whether those who seem to know so much would have been able to control him,” Felix said, adding that “we would have been controlled by a drug lord.”
According to Felix before he became commissioner of police in 2004 he had no knowledge of who Roger Khan was even though he had questioned Khan when he was arrested with others in 2002 at Good Hope, following the discovery of sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment and arms in a pick-up they were in at the time.
Felix said he became involved in the Good Hope issue after he had received a call from the Guyana Defence Force, since at the time he was the most senior police officer in the country; then Commissioner Floyd Mc Donald was out of the country. He was not the crime chief but was between admin and operations of the force.
“I was the most senior person after the commissioner; he was not in the country and I was called by the GDF to be told that they had this man in custody, I didn’t know who he was until I got there and I was shown,” Felix revealed.
He said he took Khan and the others to Eve Leary along with another officer and he questioned him, but after initially answering some of the questions Khan then clammed up and refused to talk.
“At that stage I did not know who was Roger Khan; I did not know what he was up to. But when the commissioner came back the matter was handed over to him and I had no further dealings with the matter.”
When they were caught, Khan and his partners – Haroon Yahya and then policeman Sean Belfield – had reportedly told some law enforcement officials that they were in search of Shawn Brown and the other prison escapees who had fled the Camp Street prison earlier that year. The men were later charged with possession of arms and ammunition and placed on $500,000 bail each. The charges were subsequently dismissed by Magistrate Jerrick Stephney at the Sparendaam Magistrate’s Court the following year.
Tape
Meanwhile, the former commissioner said that he is convinced that Khan was the person who arranged to make the tape recordings of Felix and others – including members of the opposition PNCR – reportedly having conversations and discussing matters of national security.
“But that tape could not have been produced by him alone; that tape must have been produced with the assistance of others. He had to have collaboration in various areas and from various people to make a recording like that.”
He said there is no doubt in his mind that a recording device was placed in his office and this had to be done while he was at a conference in January 2006 in another country.
“Somebody else occupied my office in my absence with my permission and whatever happened had to have happened then; I have no apologies to make,” Felix said.
And Felix admitted that he had turned to the US Embassy for assistance in ascertaining whether his office was bugged.
A recent WikiLeaks cable had indicated that then US Ambassador Roland Bullen had told Washington that Felix sought assistance in conducting a thorough sweep of his office to ensure that there was no hidden recording device. The cable said local phone company GT&T conducted a cursory check of Felix’s office, but not to Felix’s satisfaction.”
Felix confirmed to Stabroek News that he had contacted GT&T and a “very junior man” was sent to his office and “the man said he searched my office up to a point at Parade Street and said he found nothing.
“I did go. I did ask,” Felix said about his approach to the US Embassy but his request was denied.
And as in 2006, Felix again refused to comment on the content of the conversations on the recordings, but did not deny that one of the voices on the tape was his.
“The question of voice on the tape is not the issue; the question is the editing of the tape to create a certain meaning in statements because we all know that that tape has been edited and crudely edited,” the former top cop said. He said he was not going to admit to the content when other people had changed what he had said to create a certain meaning in the eyes of the public.
“Once the tape has been properly studied by an independent source they would see that that tape has been edited, and edited so crudely that you really can’t pick sense of what had been said in many parts,” he said.
“I am not commenting on any tape because the tape has been tampered with,” Felix said and when further probed he responded that he has never had any unprofessional conversation with any politician.
“We are made to have had an unprofessional conversation on the tape because of how it has been edited,” he reiterated.
