If as Shaheed Roger Khan claims he was the real target of the gunning down outside of the Palm Court bar which claimed the life of family member, Ricardo Fagundes, the questions would be who wants to kill him and has the wherewithal to mount an operation of the type seen on March 21?
Fagundes, knows as ‘Paper Shorts’ had around 20 shots fired at him and had been dressed similarly to Khan, a convicted drug trafficker, that night and importantly was on his way to reposition Khan’s vehicle for departure from the club when he was gunned down. Fagundes usually drove Khan’s vehicle and the two killers could have assumed that it was Khan making his way to the vehicle to depart.
As nearly two weeks have elapsed since the ‘hit’ without an arrest, the police will come under increasing pressure to provide answers – a dilemma they faced in particular during the crime spree years of 2002 to 2006 when several death squads reigned with impunity. Has another one emerged?
Two killers – clearly with information and working with a plan – one armed with a deadly AK-47 rifle and the other with a 9 mm gun – waited for the closure of the bar and the exit of patrons. On seeing a man moving towards Khan’s vehicle they sprinted across the avenue and pumped bullets into Fagundes from two sides making sure they had killed him. One of the shooters even stood over the mortally wounded man and fired some more shots to ensure death. The killers then scampered back into a white Fielder Wagon-type vehicle which sped off down Main Street never to be impeded until it apparently ended up 30 minutes later at Swan, Linden-Soesdyke Highway where the occupants set it afire to cover their tracks and with the telltale chassis number effaced. The AK-47 is a symbol of the mayhem wrought after 2002 with weapons stolen from the Guyana Defence Force. The torching of the car would also signal a higher level of operations than ordinary shootings.
So who would want to target the convicted drug trafficker Khan? Since his return here in September 2019, Khan has kept a relatively profile except for a few minor incidents. In February last year he was arrested over the alleged assault of a man at a nightspot but nothing appeared to have come of this. It is more likely that any jeopardy to Khan derives from his activities here between 2002 and 2006 when in his own words as published in newspaper advertisements he assisted the then Bharrat Jagdeo administration in fighting the unprecedented crime spree triggered by the February 23rd 2002 escape of five dangerous inmates from the Camp Street Prison.
During that period, Khan had been accused of association with a death squad which had participated in numerous killings. Indeed, when he returned to Guyana in September 2019 after serving nearly 10 years in a New York jail for drug trafficking, Khan was questioned by the police in relation to the murders of political activist Ronald Waddell and boxing coach Donald Allison. He was released after it was later admitted that there was no evidence against him.
Clearance
Between 2002 and 2006, Khan evidently had clearance from the authorities to proceed with his activities and had deep contact with various parts of the then PPP/C government. He was once seen at the Office of the President. One of the earliest signs of his reach was his interception with two others on December 4, 2002 – while the escapees were at the height of their criminal rampage – at Good Hope on the East Coast of Demerara in what was said to be a bullet-proof vehicle. Khan and his team had been about to embark on an operation. The interception was done by the Military Intelligence Unit of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF). A mini arsenal was discovered with Khan including two modified M-16 assault weapons with night vision capability, 1 Uzi sub-machine gun with silencer, 2 Glock 9mm pistols, 1 twelve gauge shotgun, bullet proof vests, helmets and electronic equipment for the interception of calls.
The interdiction by the GDF had been seen to be an interference with the plan for Khan’s operations and the unit later paid by a price for this by being miniaturised. After days of no action by the police over the interception, Khan and the persons arrested with him were charged and a trial proceeded at the magistrate’s court which eventually ended in acquittal and Khan was thereafter free to proceed with his ‘crime fighting’ operations. It was believed that some of the seized equipment such as for the interception of cellphone calls was also returned to Khan.
The ‘Phantom Squad’ was what Khan’s group came to be known as. Routinely leading up to 2006 there were numerous bloody incidents targeting the prison escapees and new recruits to their criminal enterprise where the police could provide no answers on what had transpired. The police appeared satisfied to remain on the sidelines.
Dozens of persons were slain during these operations leaving many families up to today questioning how their relatives were killed and who was to be held accountable. Khan had never been charged here or otherwise held accountable over any of these occurrences.
However, as 2006 approached and with increasing pressure from the US which was concerned over drug trafficking operations and had identified Khan as a drug trafficker in its narcotics report of that year, the Guyana Police Force finally began to move against him in relation to a series of criminal investigations. Bulletins were issued for him and in an attempt to defend his standing Khan issued advertisements in the Kaieteur News and Guyana Chronicle describing his role as a crime fighter.
Suriname
As the police closed in, Khan decided to flee to neighbouring Suriname. He would eventually be caught there on June 15th, 2006. Then Justice Minister Chan Santokhi – now the President of Suriname – at the time deemed Khan a threat to national security and linked him to murder plots in that country. By June 29th, 2006, Khan was expelled from Suriname ostensibly to be returned to Guyana. However, during a stop in Trinidad, Khan was seized by US law enforcement officers. On June 30th that year he was arraigned before a US court on a charge of “conspiring to import cocaine into the US. The ensuing court proceedings in New York until Khan pleaded guilty also gave an insight into the conduct of his operations.
Khan and the prosecution had made some explosive statements about the inner workings of his criminal enterprise. Khan’s former lawyer, Robert Simels, who was later convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice and other crimes in relation to Khan’s case, had stated that US government investigators had learnt that Khan received permission from the then Guyana government to purchase surveillance equipment capable of intercepting and tracing telephone calls made from landline or cellular phones. The software is reportedly only sold to governments.
US officials had indicated that the same equipment, which was originally seized from Khan at Good Hope in 2003, was recovered from Simels’s New York law offices. Simels had apparently retrieved it during a visit to Guyana.
Khan and Simels were charged in New York with attempting to tamper with witnesses in Khan’s drug case. It was believed that they had hatched a plot to silence former GDF Major David Clarke as he was believed to be a potent witness. A US informant Selwyn Vaughn however testified against Simels leading to his conviction in that case while Khan had earlier thrown in the towel and settled for a 15-year jail term.
On December 4, 2009, Clarke who was set to be a key witness against Khan was set free. He appeared in a Brooklyn Federal Court in New York and was sentenced by Judge John Gleeson to time served. Clarke had been in supervised custody for about three years in the US since he was indicted by the US on drug charges. He was not needed to testify against Khan as the latter had pleaded guilty.
In court on December 4, 2009, Clarke thanked the US government for saving him and his family from the “jaws of death”. He also apologized for the crimes he committed. He did not elaborate and left the court shortly after without speaking to reporters.
Judge Gleeson declared that the case was a remarkable one and Clarke would have a gripping memoir to write.
At the time that Clarke was ensnared in the activities that led to US drug charges against him, he was also the army man in charge of Operation Tourniquet in Buxton. This operation had been aimed at quelling the crime wave but was not successful. Instead, it had been alleged that Clarke was actively working with the criminals and also with Khan to traffic in cocaine. Clarke had handed himself over to the US authorities after he was indicted in New York.
Clarke’s case was of great interest here because not only was he a Major in the army, but he had been publicly accused by President Jagdeo of being in cahoots with the Buxton criminals while he was stationed there as head of the operation set up to stem the criminal upsurge sparked by the 2002 prison escapees.
Clarke was charged shortly after Khan was described as a drug trafficker in the 2006 US drug report. When the report was published, Khan had made “assorted accusations” against Clarke and others at a meeting in March 2006 with US officials at the Ocean View Hotel. He had sought to provide “evidence” that Clarke had worked in concert with Shawn Brown, one of the five February 23, 2002 prison escapees. He had alleged that during Clarke’s tenure as head of ‘Operation Tourniquet’, he was in league with Brown, who was responsible for kidnapping former US diplomat Stephen Lesniak in April 2003.
Following his arrest in Trinidad in June 2006 and his subsequent indictment on drug charges, Khan had sought to deny that he and Clarke could have been co-conspirators in exporting drugs, arguing that he had exposed the former officer’s criminal links.
And in a motion filed through his lawyers prior to him throwing in the towel and pleading guilty to drug trafficking, Khan had alleged that the then officer was so involved in criminal activities in Buxton that he delayed finding Lesniak, even though information about the location of the kidnapped man was provided.
Violent
In her affidavit to support the witness tampering charges against Khan and Simels, Special Agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Cassandra Jackson said that during Khan’s drug trial the government would seek to establish that he was the leader of a “violent drug trafficking organisation that was based in Georgetown, Guyana, from at least 2001 until his arrest in 2006.”
She had said that Khan and his co-conspirators obtained large quantities of cocaine, and then imported the cocaine into the Eastern District of New York and other places for further distribution. “Khan was ultimately able to control the cocaine industry in Guyana, in large part, because he was backed by a paramilitary squad that would murder, threaten, and intimidate others … Khan’s enforcers committed violent acts and murders …that were directly in furtherance of Khan’s drug trafficking conspiracy,” Jackson had said. She said the paramilitary squad was referred to as the ‘Phantom Squad’.
These same accusations had in 2008 led US Justice Dora Irizarry to rule in favour of an anonymous jury for the drug trial. The judge was of the opinion that the dangerousness of Khan, as alleged by the prosecution, was a fact worth considering since according to one of the government’s confidential sources the ‘Phantom Squad’ Khan was associated with was responsible for dozens of killings in Guyana from 2002 to 2006.
The fact that Khan was permitted unfettered ‘crime-fighting’ operations here between 2002 and 2006 made him privy to actions taken by key decision-makers across many agencies and put him in close proximity to them. Having served his sentence in the US and returned here in 2019, his broad knowledge could put him at risk from those who fear exposure by him. That could possibly be why he is convinced that he was the target of the March 21 shooting outside the Palm Court.