For more than a decade, the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) labeled convicted drug trafficker, Shaheed “Roger” Khan, as the People’s Progressive Party’s (PPP) executioner. PNCR claimed that Khan took instructions from PPP to kill hundreds of black youths. However, the party never really had any solid evidence of this. At least this is according to PNCR Executive Member Gary Best.
This morning, Best told the media that when the PNCR was in opposition, all it had was “anecdotal” evidence.
“The party in opposition did not have the government apparatus to do investigations. So, information, in the large part would have been anecdotal; it [PNCR] would have received information from some witnesses, who came forward and stated things that occurred, [or] what they would have witnessed,” Best said.
The former Chief of Staff is resting blame at the feet of the State and civil institutions for not acting upon this information.
“In a state, we expect the apparatus to remain intact. So, what the party expected [was]: when it came into government, that it would therefore find whatever evidence was gathered by the state, and by the state institutions, to deal with the issue of crimes that were perpetrated by Mr. Roger Khan. ”
He continued, “The police force had almost nine years before the party came into power since the issue of Mr. Roger Khan. So, what happened to that information? So, from the party’s perspective: in opposition, it couldn’t do more than observe, receive and have anecdotal information,” he said.
Best, who served as the Chief of Staff during that period, was quizzed whether he would have encountered critical information that could now be used to secure a conviction against Khan. He replied, “Yes, bits and pieces of information came within the Military and Intelligence Unit, which was shared with the Guyana Police Force, so all information we would have picked up in relation to Mr. Khan, was shared to the Guyana Police Force during that period of time. Did we receive information that the state could have acted on criminally and lead a charge against Mr. Khan? I don’t think we did. We had a lot of information that when processed perhaps would have gotten to that stage.”
Best’s comments come a day after the Leader of the Opposition, Bharrat Jagdeo said that the government has no intention to investigate allegations of state-sponsored extra-judicial killings by death squads allegedly led by Khan during that time. Jagdeo said that the government is only using that rhetoric that his party killed over 400 black youths, as a means to secure political leverage.
