Jagdeo slams Granger assassination plot probe

Last Updated on Friday, 28 July 2017, 19:31 by Denis Chabrol

Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo on Friday said the Commission of Inquiry into how well the Guyana Police Force had investigated an alleged assassination plot against President David Granger is demoralising that law enforcement agency.

The former Guyanese leader said to look into and question almost the entire leadership of the police force is bad for the police force in the public’s eye at a time of two prison unrest and escapes. “What they are doing in the his public process is going to do is destroy the entire morale of the police force the same people who will have to out and apprehend these prisoners,” he said. Jagdeo said the Commission of Inquiry was humiliating police officers.

He told a news conference that if government was dissatisfied with the police force’s probe into Andre Guillard’s allegation that one Nizam Khan had offered him GYD$7 million as a reward to kill President David Granger in June 2015, then instructions could have been given for the probe to be intensified and a comprehensive report presented to the President in two weeks.

Instead, Jagdeo accused government of hiring a known campaigner for the governing A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) in 2015, Retired Assistant Commissioner of Police Paul Slowe of conducting an unnecessary probe. “That’s how they will learn of his impartiality; how impartial he would be. He was a hard core activist of the coalition,” the Opposition Leader told a news conference.

Earlier Friday under cross examination by Attorney-at-Law Christopher Ram, acting Police Commissioner David Ramnarine conceded that he had no information to challenge Police Legal Adviser, Retired Justice Claudette Singh’s advice that the evidence was very weak.

The Opposition Leader said the Commission of Inquiry could possibly be geared to determine who are the future leaders of the Guyana Police Force. “The public nature of it and having a junior officer question people who are far superior to him and a person who us partisan heading that COI has implications for who takes over the force in the future , that reputations will be destroyed there and the public  destruction of reputations of good officers would be the basis for which to privately suppress them within the organisation,” he said.

Several detectives, the Head of the Criminal Investigations Department, Senior Superintendent Wendell Blanhum; Assistant Commissioner of Police (Operations), Clifton Hicken and Acting Police Commissioner, David Ramnarine are among those who have testified before the Commission of Inquiry.

Police Commissioner, Seelall Persaud, who is on 125 days leave, is expected to testify on Monday.