Former President Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday denied ever knowing convicted drug trafficker Roger Khan or shutting down the Military Criminal Intelligence Division (MCID) of the GDF.
At a People’s Progressive Party press conference, Jagdeo said “I know I never gave a single illegal instruction ever in my tenure, anything that is contrary to the Defence Act, the Constitution nor have I asked anyone to deny any citizen of this country their, any of their rights including to set up these squad whatever they say these death squads.”
He stated that the longstanding perception of a connection with Khan was false, “Roger Khan was never my friend,” adding, “in fact he was friendly from the intelligence report with some of the names I mentioned before,” hinting at retired members of the military and police force currently aligned with the opposition coalition.
Khan had said that he had fought criminals here on behalf of the government. “I never turned a blind eye to anything because we went after all the criminals in the country” Jagdeo said while noting that he never believed that members of the death squad were “helping us.”
The former President instead recalled that “I said if these criminals killed each other I don’t lose any sleep at night, that’s what I said because they were just brutal. A lot of them were just killing ordinary people.”
He emphasised that the leaked so-called WikiLeaks US cables to Washington could not be trusted because they perpetuated falsehoods and as a result he did not condone investigating any connections between the leaked cables and possible government ties with Khan.
“Did I have concerns on military intelligence? Yes I had concerns about the reports and the veracity of those reports but did I shut it [MCID] down because they were going after Leslie Ramsammy or something like that’s what I saw some unnamed source from the military said, absolutely false”, Jagdeo said. Ramsammy’s name was brought up during Khan’s trial in New York.
In 2009, Khan’s former lawyer Robert Simels in court had claimed that the ‘spy’ computer, Khan was caught with, was purchased through the Guyana Government and that then Minister of Health and current Minister of Agriculture Dr Ramsammy was responsible for the collection of the equipment and organising the training of Khan in the use of the computer. Ramsammy has denied the claims.
The MCID had intercepted Khan on December 4, 2009 and the unit was later disbanded. Jagdeo at the press conference said “I don’t think I shut it down I think we had changes. The G2 still operated but you had significant changes in the G2. G2’s never been shut down. You can’t shut down army intelligence.”
In a letter in Saturday’s edition of the Stabroek News, retired Lieutenant Colonel George Gomes referred to Jagdeo’s recent statements at a Freedom House press conference that the Army may have decided not to go after the criminals during the crime wave of the 2000’s.
Jagdeo claimed that reports received from the military were “sterilized” prior to reaching him which was concerning to him. He said that “on the chain up to the Commander-in- Chief key things were taken out of them particularly things that identified political operatives or questioned their role in the incidents at Buxton so I had grave concerns about the official channel sometimes the veracity of their reports but they did not know that I had parallel to that the initial drafts that came from a lot of other soldiers.”
“I knew too that you had people that were interested in us not doing what we should have done which is to get rid of those criminals very early to liberate the community Buxton and the people of Buxton liberate them early. You had people, who were working from the inside to undermine that process” Jagdeo contended.
Khan was eventually held in Suriname on June 15, 2006. Suriname’s then Minister of Justice Chandrikapersad Santokhi deemed Khan a threat to national security and linked him to more murder plots – the assassination of key government and judicial officials – in that country. By 29th June 2006, Khan was expelled from Suriname and, on 30th June was arraigned before a US court on a charge of “conspiring to import cocaine” in the USA. He was tried and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
