Former Home Affairs Minister Gail Teixeira yesterday accused former Commissioner of Police Winston Felix of failing to control the crime spree during his tenure at the helm of the Guyana Police Force (GPF), saying he was diverted by a very narrow focus on now convicted drug lord Roger Khan.
“…I am convinced as the minister then that we had enough to be able to get on top of that crime situation to save lives, but we were not able to do it because it appears now…that the Commissioner of Police…had diverted his attention in a very narrow direction,” she said. According to her, Felix was in possession of information that there were other criminal gangs operating that were murdering people and which posed threats to the security of the nation and the state.
Teixeira also rejected Felix’s assertion that he had no knowledge of Khan before 2004, even though he (Felix) had questioned him with others in connection with the Good Hope arms find in 2002. “This is quite bizarre as first of all Roger Khan’s name was being called in the 2002-2004 period by the media and opposition politicians and secondly, and more importantly, Mr. Felix admitted to me that he had had a liaison with a woman for quite a while who was the mother of one of Roger Khan’s girlfriends and they would end up at the same house many times,” Teixeira charged. “Further that through this common interest, they had got to know each other and he acknowledged that RK called him from time to time,” she said.
Teixeira, who was the Minister of Home Affairs during Felix’s tenure, was speaking at a news conference where she responded to recent statements made by the former commissioner in an interview with this newspaper and in other parts of the media. Felix, who is an election candidate for opposition coalition A Partnership For National Unity (APNU), has in recent interviews been very critical of the way the PPP/C managed the police force during his tenure as commissioner.
Teixeira said that Felix has admitted to being focused on the activities of Roger Khan, while adding that he would have ignored reliable intelligence about various criminal gangs in his singular pursuit of Khan. She, however, emphasised that she was not defending Khan and said that the drug trafficker got what he deserved.
“Despite the fact that people were afraid… despite the fact that people felt that there were persons in the police force that would rat on them, there was information that could have helped to respond with greater alacrity to certain situations,” she said. Felix, she contended, by his own admission appeared to have been “focusing very narrowly on one aspect of the violent crime situation at that time and appeared to be less interested in what were the violent groups which had also a political agenda.” Had this intelligence been acted upon, it would have resolved much of “the conjecture and speculation” about Roger Khan’s involvement in these activities, she opined.
“He [Felix] may not have been wrong. Who is saying that Roger Khan wasn’t involved in things? No one is saying that but the fact that the Commissioner of Police seemed to have a one track mind… he only seemed to want to look in one direction even when it was clear with the Agricola massacre in February 2006 that another group was involved,” she said.
Felix had access to volumes of information which supported the view that criminal elements in Buxton stood as a challenge to state authority, the former minister indicated. “He also had access to other telling information provided to him using modern technology and somehow never sought to use it to assist the Joint Services in apprehending the criminal gang and stopping the terror that Guyanese society faced,” she said.
Noteworthy in its omissions, she said, was Felix’s failure to mention the three dozen AK-47s and other weaponry stolen from the GDF in his recent pronouncements and the impact they had on the violent crime wave. Instead, she said, he focused on a recorded telephone conversation which was made public. She indicated that while Felix has repeatedly said that the recording, which featured him had been tampered with, when the government sought the help of the US Embassy, it said it could not ascertain whether it had been tampered with.
“Maybe it is time that Mr. Felix and the PNC apologise to the Guyanese people because by diverting and on focusing on one element of the crime situation, that in fact, a number of people’s lives were lost,” Teixeira stated.
Questioned as to whether Felix’s pursuit of Khan was influenced by intelligence, Teixeira said: “If he had it, he never shared it…he certainly didn’t share it with me.” She added that whatever information she had on criminal activities, she passed on to him. Asked specifically about information on Khan, Teixeira would not say whether she had any intelligence on him. “I had information on all sort of things, on everything, on anything. I would not say that I didn’t have or I did have,” she said. “But any Minister of Home Affairs who doesn’t have the capacity to have information is not worth their salt and I’m saying in this situation I was worth my salt in that area,” she contended. “Everything we had, I had and everything that was able to assist the police physically, financially, information wise…was shared with the Guyana Police Force through the Commissioner of Police as the conduit through which everything went..,” she said.
Meanwhile, the former minister criticised Felix for only trying to disassociate himself from the influence of the PPP. “I am not aware that aware that Mr. Felix was under any influence by the PPP,” she said, adding “he does not go [to say] I resisted being influenced by the PPP, by the PNC or by any political party or any other force. I was a professional I did my job. He has not said that at any time,” she said.
“Mr. Felix calls for national inquiries into the Lusignan, Bartica and Lindo creek murders; maybe the “pigeons are coming home to roost” and a national inquiry into the violent crime wave, who were the actors behind it and the subsequent responses of the GPF under Mr. Felix’s watch, may be worthwhile considering,” Teixeira added.
