Bartica massacre accused Mark Royden Williams yesterday told Justice Roxane George SC and the jury hearing his trial that he is innocent of the charges levelled against him.
“I was not there at Bartica. I’m innocent,” he stated after being called upon to lead his defence and opting to do so in unsworn testimony from the prisoners’ dock.
The accused, called “Smallie,” along with Dennis Williams, called “Anaconda” and Roger Simon, called “Goat Man,” is charged with murdering 12 men, including three police officers in the 2008 Bartica massacre.
It is alleged that on February 17, 2008, they murdered Lance Corporal Zaheer Zakir, and Constables Shane Fredericks and Ron Osborne, as well as Edwin Gilkes, Dexter Adrian, Irving Ferreira, Deonarine Singh, Ronald Gomes, Ashraf Khan, Abdool Yasseen, Errol Thomas, and Baldeo Singh.
Justice George also overruled no-case submissions made on behalf of Dennis and Simon, by their attorneys Saphier Hussain and Peter Hugh, respectively. The option of leading their respective defences is expected to be put to them on Monday.
Speaking for the first time since the trial commenced some three months ago, Mark Royden began his address by stating, “Your Honour and members of the jury, I was never at Bartica on the night the incident occurred there.”
According to Mark Royden, he was at the Cummings Lodge home of his cousin, Sheldon Williams, whom he moments later called as an alibi witness in his defence.
The accused said he learnt about the attack at Bartica, while watching television that night and immediately woke his cousin and told him. He said that they both “watched it together.”
After his client’s address to the court, attorney Roger Yearwood called Sheldon Williams, one of their two witnesses, to the stand.
In response to questions from Yearwood, Sheldon, a taxi driver, started by explaining that he was a former police officer but was dismissed because of tardiness and absenteeism.
He was dismissed in 2004, after about nine years in the Guyana Police Force. He told the court, “I used to mind fowl and I had to clean up me yard and so.” In addition, the witness said his uniform was seldom ironed, and that “there was a lot of mud and so on in the yard, and suh I used to be late for work.”
After repeatedly sending sick leave correspondences to his employer, Sheldon said he eventually received a dismissal letter. “Suh I lef de job and become a minibus driver,” Sheldon said. He now drives hire cars.
He later agreed with Prosecutor Stacy Goodings, under cross-examination, that he was lying to his employer whenever he prepared sick leave forms, since he was not genuinely sick.
He, however, quickly interjected, “but I was in a very uncomfortable position at the time.” Goodings, however, assertively asked him the question repeatedly, to which he then answered that he was being dishonest each time he requested sick leave from the force.
‘Scared’
When asked if he had heard about the Bartica massacre, Sheldon, who seemed to suffer spasms and would hyperventilate when asked certain questions, said that he was lying in bed when his cousin told him something, as a result of which he looked at the television and saw that something was happening at the Bartica Police Station. “I feel a lot of pain and went back to my bed and lie down,” he said.
The witness was then asked by Yearwood, if he recalled June 15, 2008. According to Sheldon, who said yes, he was in his bedroom, praying, when his cousin told him something. As a result, he said he looked outside and saw that police had circled his house.
He said that after the lawmen had conducted a search of his house, yard and septic tank, which unearthed nothing, both he and his cousin, Mark Royden, were arrested.
Sheldon said that he was taken to the Sparendaam Police Station and was later charged with “harbouring a wanted person.” He did not know where they had taken his cousin.
He told counsel he did not know, at that time, that his cousin was wanted by the police. He added that the charge against him (Sheldon) was dismissed.
Asked whether he had informed the police that his cousin was at home with him at the time of the attack at Bartica, the witness said he did not. Pressed as to why he did not, Sheldon told Yearwood, “I had my kids to take care of, and when I think of it, I had lost a lot of squaddies/workmates at that time, and I was scared.”
The witness said that Constable Fredericks and Lance Corporal Zakir, whom he knew were stationed at Bartica, were like a father and brother to him respectively.
Goodings had asked Sheldon if he wanted the court to believe that he merely went back to bed, even after hearing that the station at Bartica, where two officers so dear to him were stationed, was attacked.
He responded in the affirmative and noted that he went to sleep.
Asked if he considered his cousin’s arrest to have been a serious occurrence, the witness told Goodings he did.
Then pressed as to whether he did not resultantly think it important to have told the police that his cousin was with him on the night in question, Sheldon responded in the negative. “I was scared for my life,” he would repeatedly state, as he again began to hyperventilate and display spasms, which quickly ended once another
question was posed, by which time he would be fully composed again.
The witness confirmed with the prosecutor that he never gave police any statement explaining that his cousin was at home with him on the night in question.
When asked, Sheldon told Goodings that he was aware when the preliminary inquiry (PI) commenced into the charges against the accused in the killings at Bartica, but never testified “because I was scared for my life.”
“Are you scared from then till now?” an irate Prosecutor Goodings enquired. “Yes, I still scared,” Sheldon said.
Asked by Justice George what he is sacred of, the witness, whose spasms started again, appeared as if he wanted to cry though no tears were present and again said that he had lost a lot of squaddies.
Mark Royden’s next witness is expected to testify when the trial continues on Monday morning at the High Court in Georgetown.
The state’s case is being presented by Goodings, in association with Prosecutor Diana Kaulesar.
The charges against the trio stem from an attack at Bartica in which gunmen attacked the police station first, killing the three policemen. They then reportedly took the vehicle assigned to the station and went on a rampage, terrorising the community and murdering the nine others. According to testimony given during the trial, the gunmen arrived in the area by boat and departed in similar fashion, taking with them firearms they had grabbed from the police station and from a mining company.
