The Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the March 2nd 2020 general elections yesterday learnt that based on documents provided by the Guyana Police Force (GPF) that most of the instructions between March 5 and March 6 of 2020 came from two senior ranks identified as Assistant Superintendents (ASP) Kingston and Nurse and it also heard testimony about the evacuation of the GECOM Chair from the Ashmins building.
According to credible sources, the commission had summoned the force to provide certain documents and names of all the ranks on duty during the March 2020 election. Those documents were submitted since Tuesday but witnesses were only called yesterday to testify on those documents.
Appearing before the CoI were Head of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), Detective Sergeant Elston Baird, and Deputy Superintendent, Ronel Ali, who is attached to the Tactical Services Unit (TSU).
Baird, who was tasked with the responsibility of gathering those documents from the Force, yesterday told the commission’s counsel, Sophia Chote SC, that he could not have provided all the documents that the CoI had summoned since he was told when he went to the Brickdam Police Station that some of them were destroyed in the fire back in October of last year.
“According to information I received from Assistant Superintendent Rear McGregor … the building was destroyed on the 2nd of October 2021 hence those were where the other records were also disrupted,” Baird told the CoI. However, a further search at the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) at Eve Leary was conducted and additional entries were found.
According to the head of the OPR, on March 5th, a number of ranks were given instructions by ASP Kingston to go to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Command Centre at High and Hadfield streets due to a report of a bomb scare.
On arrival, the ranks instructed everyone in the building including some presidential candidates to quickly exit for their safety but they all refused and according to Baird, their reply was, “We are not leaving, we prefer to dead” and so they remained in the Ashmins building. Due to their reactions, no search was conducted on the building to verify if indeed a bomb was there.
Moreover, according to the police records, the same ranks were called back on March 6, 2020, to conduct a search of the building where they said that they were shown an item, but based on their investigations, no bombs were ever found in the building.
Recounting the events that occurred on March 5th, Deputy Superintendent Ali yesterday said that he, along with another rank who he identified as Deputy Superintendent Davis were on duty. He said that earlier on that day he and his colleague were instructed by ASP Nurse who was also the Officer in Charge of the TSU to go the Ashmins building and “get” the GECOM Chairman, Claudette Singh, out of the building.
“We went through the entrance of the building and we went upstairs where there were a lot of people trying to force their way through a door… there was a side door attached to the side of the office, we made our way through that door and through the back exit of the Ashmins building… she boarded her vehicle and went away and we went back to the Tactical Services Unit”, he said.
He added that later on that same day, he was informed by Davis that additional instructions were handed down from Nurse to go back and escort everyone out of the Ashmins building.
“He told him the unit has to go back to Ashmins building to clear the building…everyone needs to come out and the building need to be secured under locks and keys…”
Ali said that from his memory, all of his instructions came from Nurse and not from any member of GECOM.
