My testimony at the Lindo Creek massacre inquiry last Friday
Since I was the first media operative that owner of the Lindo Creek diamond mine, Leonard Arokium, contacted after he discovered that his eight employees on the site were murdered, I was asked to give testimony at the Commission of Inquiry. I did so last Friday. I have been in the media for 30 years, and in all my journalistic investigations, I believe only two of them I have made up my mind about definitively.
There are still unanswered questions about the Buxton conspiracy. I risked my life and that of my wife trying to get as much facts as I could about the dimensions of the event from the Mashramani jailbreak in 2002 until the rampage abated in 2008. Person or persons shot at my home during my investigations and a bullet missed my wife’s head by inches. I chose not to make that act public knowledge, because I was afraid that others may have wanted to copycat that gunman or gunmen.
For two years I kept it secret; only three persons knew. My friend, Regent Street businessman, Sheik Isaacs, who supervised the carpentry work after the bullet was taken out, Glenn Lall, who inspected the wall of my bedroom where the bullet was lodged, and one of the persons I admire in this life, Yesu Persaud.
There are still unanswered questions as to the source of that attack, because I discovered some surprising facts about the Buxton conspiracy, and therefore different actors for different reasons would have wanted to shut me up. I never believe or will ever believe that the 2005 assault on me in which my car was hijacked was ever a robbery. I wasn’t robbed. In all these journeys of inquiry into what took place in Buxton and the related dimensions, I am still to fit the puzzle neatly in place.
Only two puzzles I think I have done better in understanding – the killing of Axel Williams during the violent Buxton syndrome and the Lindo Creek massacre.
Here is a very brief summary of my testimony Friday morning. Mr. Arokium sought me out saying I was the only one he trusted in the media to talk to that would put his side of the story in the media. I agreed to speak with him the night he called. I identified as our meeting place, the office of the editor of the Catholic Standard, Colin Smith. As the car pulled up at South Road and Wellington Street, I became afraid. What if his cell phone or mine was bugged and the men in the car weren’t Arokium and his people?
He kept blowing the horn, but I was afraid to look out through the window. I don’t know why I did, but I did. Arokium came up to the Catholic Standard office and I was told a story that was plausible. But I had to do more investigations. I did, and my conclusions were that the Fineman gang did not commit the atrocities. One of the police statements on why the Fineman gang murdered the men was because the miners informed the security forces on their location.
Why the police chose to say that is extremely suspicious, because President Jagdeo was given first hand information by a close contact of the Fineman gang where to find them, and President Jagdeo immediately put the operation in place to pursue the gang. The Arokium camp, I believe, did not do what the police accused them of.
I took the maps that Arokium left with me, and spoke with policemen who went through the maps with me and meticulously examined the logistics of the situation. I was convinced in 2008 and remain convinced onto this day that it was not possible for the Fineman gang to have escaped from the elite security squad that had engaged them (killing one of the gang members) at Christmas Falls, travelled over almost impassable and impossible terrain and reached Lindo Creek, without the security squad catching up with them.
I remember distinctly that night at the Catholic Standard experiencing a cold feeling running in my veins when Mr. Arokium said, “look Freddie, look at this… this is Christmas Falls, this is Lindo Creek, vast creeks and mountainous areas separate the two.” He went on to show how it was not possible for the criminals to be running from the security squad and find their way to Lindo Creek, since that would not be their escape route. I cited four crucial factors that would erase any possibility of the Fineman marauders killing the miners. The truth of what happened at Lindo Creek needs to be revealed.
