Killings during 2000-2008 to be investigated – “In due course, I will ensure that all of those mothers’ children who were killed have their deaths investigated” – President Granger
WHILE no date has been set for the official opening of an enquiry into unsolved and unnatural deaths between the years 2000 and 2008, this issue is one of the priorities for the David Granger Administration.Head of State David Granger on Sunday told a gathering of professors, seniors, middle-aged and young people that, “In due course, I will ensure that all of those mothers’ children who were killed have their deaths investigated.”
The occasion was the Cuffy 250 Third Annual State of the African-Guyanese Forum at the Critchlow Labour College, Woolford Avenue, Georgetown. And many in the gathering showed their support for this move with a resounding applause.
In 2012, Mr Granger had drafted a motion which sought to have the very issue addressed but it was not successful in the 10th Parliament. Back then the motion sought to open cases of every unnatural death.
On Sunday, President Granger said that the opening of the cases is lawful and while he has no immediate date for the start, he has already begun discussions with Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Basil Williams on the matter.
Among the deaths which will be investigated is that of former Minister of Agriculture Minister Satyadeow Sawh, his siblings and the security guard who were gunned down at their home back in 2006.
“When you have young men being shot in the back of their heads with their hands tied, when you have so many deaths which have not been investigated, when a Minister of the Government has been assassinated and you don’t even have an inquest into his death, it is something stink, something stink and we are going to investigate those deaths,” President Granger told the gathering.
The issue of a former Minister of Government playing a part in the shipment of computers with the ability to track mobile phones was also mentioned by the President.
The President also hinted at the deaths in Bartica as well as the many policemen and residents from the community of Buxton who were also killed during the period between 2000 and 2008, pointing to the three monuments erected at Bartica, Eve Leary and Buxton to remember those killed.
He further noted that never before have so many policemen been killed and never after so many were killed than during the tenure of former President Bharrat Jagdeo. However, President Granger called on citizens to allow the monuments to remind them about the deaths which took place between 2000 and 2008.
“We must ensure that our country must ever again become so divided that we feel the only way of resolving our differences is by violent crime,” stated Mr Granger.
During the period 2000 and 2008, Guyana was hit with one of the most murderous so-called crime sprees in its history, with the reign of drug lords and hitmen, corrupt police, phantom squads and other death squads who almost brought the country to a state of anarchy.
The period saw the deadly Mash Day 2002 Camp Street jail break, gunning down of unarmed youths, execution-style killings of policemen, murders of businessmen, disappearances of individuals, kidnappings, high profile robberies, hijackings and shootouts between criminals and Joint Services ranks.
Subsequent tales by an informant at the time placed Government officials at the centre of some of the underworld activities, but that informant, George Bacchus, was subsequently gunned down.
The killings have left many widows, orphans and other individuals with emotional scars.
A dossier of the persons who were killed was produced and published to bring awareness to the unsolved murders, shootings and disappearances as sections of civil society called for inquests into those killings.
