Friday’s deportation from the US of convicted drug trafficker Roger Khan now places the onus on law enforcement authorities to conclude the requisite investigations into his activities here prior to his departure for Suriname in the middle of June 2006 where he was arrested and then taken into custody by the US authorities while transiting Trinidad and Tobago.
On October 16, 2009, Khan was sentenced to two 15-year terms of imprisonment and one 10-year term by the US Eastern District Court in Brooklyn, New York on charges of drug smuggling, witness tampering and gun possession in the US state of Vermont. Justice Dora L. Irizarry ordered that the sentences run concurrently which meant that Khan would only serve 15 years. Khan eventually served a sentence of just under 10 years.
Khan was charged with conspiring to import cocaine into the US over a five-year period from January 2001 to March 2006. He eventually pleaded guilty in the US court and entered a plea bargaining arrangement with prosecutors. The US government had said he was the leader of a cocaine trafficking organisation based in Georgetown. It also asserted that he was able to import huge amounts of cocaine into Guyana, and then oversee exportation to the US and elsewhere. The US government had charged that a significant amount of the cocaine distributed by Khan went to the Eastern District of New York for further distribution. As an example, it cited a Guyanese drug trafficking organisation based in Queens, New York, which it said was supplied by Khan. The Queens organisation was said to have distributed hundreds of kilos of cocaine in a two-month period during the early part of 2003.
Despite the fact that it appeared to be well known that Khan was engaged in the drug trade no charge was brought against him here by the Guyana Police Force (GPF) during the period of January 2001 and March 2006 cited by the US government. In that period of the PPP/C administration, as continues to be the case today, the GPF was riven by incompetence, incapacity and infiltration by politically driven edicts. So not only was Khan not investigated or charged in relation to drugs but he was allowed to operate with impunity in various areas.
Khan came to wide public notice in December of 2002 when he and others were intercepted by the Guyana Defence Force Intelligence Unit with weapons and a laptop believed to be able to trace phones. After a delay of several days he was charged over the weapons and a trial conducted on the East Coast during which he was acquitted but which raised questions about the seriousness of the prosecution’s efforts. Khan was then free to resume his activities.
The period of 2002 to 2006 constituted the bloodiest in the post-independence history of the country and was triggered by the escape of five dangerous prisoners from the Camp Street jail who then embarked on gruesome attacks all along the coast after embedding themselves in the backlands of Buxton/Friendship. It has been alleged that during this period Khan recruited a private armed force which protected his business, targeted competitors and went after persons that he deemed to be criminals. This is the period of his presence here that now requires a full, clinical investigation.
Since his arrival here on Friday, Khan has been questioned in relation to the murders of boxing coach Donald Allison and journalist Ronald Waddell. In the interest of law and order, it behoves Khan to come clean with the authorities on all of the matters he was involved in and aware of. Heinous crimes were committed during that period, many of them on hapless citizens who the then government and the police force were abjectly unable to protect. There has to be accountability across the board for these acts and those who were involved, dead or alive, must be exposed for a measure of justice to be secured.
Khan, who had made it known in local newspaper advertisements prior to his arrest in Suriname that he had been a crime fighter on behalf of the government, now has wide berth to explain exactly what he meant by his declaration, who in the then PPP/C government he dealt with, how he was able to conduct these activities in the full view of the police force and, of course, to answer the various allegations that have arisen since 2002 over the involvement of his gang of private gunmen in numerous murders and maimings.
The return of Khan to these shores is a challenge for both the government and the opposition. In relation to the PPP/C, Khan symbolises the grotesque failure of law and order which characterised its term in uninterrupted office from October 1992 to May 2015. Law and order reached its nadir in the period 2002 to 2008 and the government officials responsible for law enforcement during that period still have much to answer for particularly in relation to the claim of state support for private gunmen – the so-called phantom squad – and their reputed dealings with Khan over a number of years which saw him gaining access to weaponry and eavesdropping equipment. The compromising of the GPF and the Guyana Defence Force during this period should also be the subject of careful examination.
In the case of the APNU+AFC government, when he was in opposition and leading the PNCR and APNU, President Granger had made much capital of the activities of Khan and the phantom squad. He had also lamented the numerous unexplained murders and massacres of that period. In presidential office, the President further developed the theme by frequently referring to what he dubbed the `The troubles’ and linking the excesses of that period with various societal deformities. However, President Granger and his Minister of Public Security must explain what steps they took to begin a forensic examination of that period so that iron-clad evidence could be brought to bear upon the return of Khan. It doesn’t appear as if the government – which launched dozens of fruitless inquiries since 2015 – undertook any serious work in investigating the period, gathering certified testimonies from the US courts, mobilizing witnesses, activating the necessary witness protection mechanisms etc. In other words, President Granger did much talking but there has been little action. It will soon be evident whether the GPF itself has done any real work in gathering viable evidence in the murders of Allison and Waddell.
A comprehensive inquiry into the events from 2002 to 2008 is required to provide answers to the public and enable some measure of healing for the hundreds of families which continue to suffer. The Granger Administration failed in this task, settling on an inquiry into the Lindo Creek massacre for political reasons. There is now no hope of any comprehensive investigation as the caretaker government no longer has constitutional standing and must soon face the electorate.