-3,000 NICIL files taken in SOCU raid
As questions pile up and pressure mounts on his administration over a botched intelligence operation that resulted in three deaths on December 30, President David Granger yesterday said he sees no need for a full probe.
Guyana Defence Force (GDF) soldier, Sergeant Robert Pyle, his wife Stacy Pyle and canter driver Linden Eastman perished on Carifesta Avenue following a horrific collision. The car driven by Robert Pyle had been chasing another vehicle when it slammed into Eastman’s canter.
It has since been revealed that Pyle was at the time chasing a vehicle he believed was occupied by relatives of the Head of NICIL, Winston Brassington. Pyle was mistaken as the passengers in the vehicle were relatives of PPP/C MP Charles Ramson Jr. Pyle had been part of an operation being conducted by the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU).
“I don’t think it requires a full probe because Sergeant Pyle was on an official mission at the time and it was quite an unfortunate accident in which three persons died so we certainly regret the loss of life but I don’t see there is need for a probe at the present time”, Granger told reporters shortly after the swearing in ceremony for Minister within the Ministry of Communities Valerie Adams-Patterson had ended.
Granger was asked specifically if moves are being made for a full probe but said that the Chief of Staff of the GDF has examined the information.
He said though that “once a soldier dies he (the Chief of Staff) will conduct an internal probe and I do believe it is adequate, I don’t know if that has been done. If it has not been done I will certainly ask that that be done but I don’t think it needs to go wider than that”.
Told that the opposition PPP/C has since accused the government of using the army to do political work, he responded that there has always been a pattern of Joint Services collaboration between the Defence Force and the Police Force. “Whenever the need arises the police force can call on the defence force for assistance. This has taken place over the last 60 years”, he said adding that a Joint Operations Centre (JOC) is in existence.
Asked if it mean putting civilians under surveillance by the military, he stressed that the “Defence Force and the Police Force are responsible for state security”.
When asked who sanctioned the mission that Pyle was on, Granger told reporters that as far as he knows SOCU is conducting some investigations and it is “assumed that the request may have come from the police force to the defence force”.
Briefed
On the question of government being briefed on the operation, he said that government was aware that an operation was taking place but “we don’t get involved in the detailed operational use of the two forces”. He later said that responsibility for the operational use of the police force lies with the Commissioner of Police while for the Defence Force it is the Chief of Staff. He said that these responsibilities are specifically prescribed by the Police Act and the Defence Act. “So no politician gets involved in giving operation directives to the Chief of Staff or the Commissioner”.
Pressed for a direct response as to whether government has been briefed, Granger told reporters that after the accident, government was given some information but “we did not direct the operation. The operation is directed by the respective heads of service”.
On Tuesday the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) broke its silence and confirmed that Pyle was on a “legitimate operation.”
“Defence Headquarters wishes to notify the public that the late Sergeant Robert Pyle, a member of the Intelligence Unit of the Guyana Defence Force, was deployed on a legitimate operation in support “ of SOCU, the GDF said in a statement.
The statement came mere hours after the Private Sector Commission called on the police and the army to explain the circumstances behind the accident.
When contacted yesterday, Ramson Jr told this newspaper that his family does not want to speak on the incident but that the opposition PPP/C will today make a statement on it.
The agents ended up pursuing Ramson’s wife and her brother, a race car driver. They escaped the attempt to intercept them and made a report to the Kitty Police Station believing they were the targets of a possible kidnapping.
Sources close to Brassington told Stabroek News that that his family is scared for their safety and that they have little confidence in the law enforcement system considering how the events of December 30.
According to the source, the family is alarmed that there has been no response from the Public Security Minister, Khemraj Ramjattan over the fact that Brassington’s children’s civil liberties would have been violated had it been them at the residence. The source noted that by intending to target Brassington’s children, a chilling precedent has been laid.
The family member noted that they are confused as to why Brassington’s children would be under surveillance by SOCU and under which mandate this was approved.
The family sources noted that the recklessness of the operation put multiple lives in danger in addition to the three lives lost and there has been no explanation as to why the intelligence officer was given orders to chase another vehicle on a busy road in the first place.
The source said that so far over 3,000 files from NICIL were removed during a raid by SOCU and that letters from individual members of the executive have given direct orders to SOCU for the information collection. The source explained that many of the documents seized were related to the private sector.
Meanwhile, former Attorney General Anil Nandlall also weighed in on the incident. He pointed out that the issue of having army personnel assigned to SOCU in their GDF capacity is in contravention of the rules and establishment of the agency and to have them pursuing civilians would be frightening to anyone.
He said that the establishment of SOCU, which was founded under the Donald Ramotar administration, was part of an administrative requirement of the Anti-Money Laundering law. The agency’s mandate was to deal exclusively with money laundering and terrorism-related activities. It was to be run solely by the Guyana Police Force. If persons were seconded to SOCU from the army then those persons would function as the GPF and not GDF for that period, he said.
“I (being the Attorney General at the time) advised that this unit be established as part of the Guyana Police Force and the members of this unit be sworn in as the GPF, so as to vest them with police powers. What I am learning now is very alarming, that is SOCU being used for activities wholly unrelated to money laundering or terrorism and secondly that it is now composed of army officers and not police officers .The army has confirmed Pyle was an active GDF officer who seemed to be functioning as part of SOCU,” he said.
“My questions is was or is Mr Brassington being investigated for money laundering or terrorism? Are his children being investigated for money laundering or terrorism? If not then SOCU has no mandate to be investigating them and then to be following them around in a duplicitous manner. Someone must come forward either in GPF or GDF or MOP (Ministry of the Presidency) and answer: has the mandate of SOCU changed and to what has it changed? Also, answer how an active member of the army can function as an active member of a civilian unit which is SOCU and who gave those orders,” he added.
Shock
Meanwhile, opposition Chief Whip Gail Teixeira said she was in shock at the Carifesta Avenue collision.
At a party press briefing yesterday at PPP Headquarters, Freedom House, Teixeira said “if you are doing intelligence operations and you are staking out a place then you may have an interest in when they come and go, you know those types of things, but to give chase particularly when it turns out they may have been at the wrong place and they may have been chasing the wrong people and not the people they thought they were chasing or going after…The police has to answer and the GDF have to answer all of this.”
She asked “what reason could there have been for chasing anybody? This was not a robbery going on. This was not guys running out of a house with guns therefore you have to give chase. This was not that, this was they were staking out a place it appears and therefore decided to block the persons leaving and then chase them down the road and that is scary. That is not something to be treated lightly.”
The opposition Chief Whip, and former Home Affairs Minister under the PPP/C, said “heads of the police and army have to answer: did they give the order…if they gave the order they take the responsibility.”
An army source told Stabroek News that while the public may be alarmed to learn of the army’s partnerships with the police or other agencies, it should not be as it is nothing new. “This is nothing new. Sometimes we go with CANU [the Customs Anti-Narcotic Unit], sometimes the police, we even do with GGMC [the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission] but we can’t make the public privy to these operations because it can blow your cover. If you are working undercover, what good would it serve for me to come to Stabroek [News] or Kaieteur [News] and say… that defeats everything,” the source said.
Teixeira said it is not a question of who was the target but instead a question of the methodology used. She said that if someone is under surveillance or on a watch list there are procedures and practices that the police and the defence force would be well aware of.
“The GDF has to come out and say and the police have to come out and say if they were tracking Brassington’s daughter as that seems to be coming out, as they thought they were then who gave the orders because the initial reaction of both gentlemen was they seemed to not be fully aware”, Teixeira said of both Police Commissioner Seelall Persaud and GDF Chief of Staff Mark Phillips.
She said details emerging from the incident simply did not make sense and that the public was right to seek more information on what transpired. Teixeira stated that the operation was alarming and that citizens as a whole needed to be concerned with how the government saw fit to conduct surveillance.
“It is a tragic thing, a terrible thing that happened,” she said, while noting that “if you want to investigate someone get a search warrant”. She called the conduct of the government “sinister” and that without an explanation, society as a whole had to be concerned with how the government planned to conduct law enforcement operations.
