Queens Rep. Meeks too close to ‘repressive’ Guyana regime, critics say

By Isabel Vincent

July 3, 2021 | 1:14pm | Updated

Queens Congressman Gregory Meeks is cozying up to a “repressive regime” in Guyana, claims a former political prisoner who said leaders of the South American country held him in solitary confinement for five years.

Mark Benschop, a Guyanese journalist who lives in New York, demonstrated outside the Democratic Rep’s district office in Queens in June to protest what he called close ties between Meeks and honchos of the alleged rights-violating People’s Progressive Party (PPP).

“I organized the protest because I wanted to say to Gregory Meeks that as chairman of the foreign relations committee, he should exercise caution with them,” Benschop, 48, told The Post, referencing the lawmaker’s powerful post, which he’s held since December 2020.

“Instead, he is cozying up to a regime that violates people’s human rights.”

Meeks huddled in a closed door meeting last month with Robert Persaud, Guyana’s foreign secretary, who was in the Congressman’s Queens district for the co-naming of Liberty Avenue and Lefferts Blvd as Little Guyana Avenue in Richmond Hill, Benschop said.

A spokesman for the foreign relations committee confirmed the meeting but said Meeks also met with leaders of the former government — now in opposition — during his 2020 Congressional trip to Guyana.

Persaud was part of the PPP cabinet when Benschop was convicted on what he called “a trumped up treason charge” after he got arrested in 2002, he said.

Benschop, who hosted a television program in Guyana in the early aughts, conceded he was a strident government critic.

“They didn’t like the fact that I was exposing extra-judicial killings,” Beschop claimed. He said he spent his entire five-year jail term in solitary confinement.

Since his 2007 release, he has continued to level criticisms against the PPP on his online radio program “Straight Up.”

Benshcop said PPP leaders were re-elected last year under “questionable circumstances.” Opposition politicians are currently challenging the election in court, he said.

Meeks has had chummy relationships with other authoritarian world leaders.

He allegedly intervened with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez on behalf of benefactor and convicted fraudster Allen Stanford in 2006.

Little Guyana Avenue at Liberty Avenue in South Richmond Hill, Queens, NY.Brigitte Stelzer for NY Post

He praised Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe when the two met the in 2010 as part of a Congressional delegation looking into humanitarian projects and the country’s government.

Meeks has had a close relationship with the Guyanese Queens community, particularly with convicted fraudster Edul Ahmad, a Richmond Hill real estate broker who gave him a $40,000 loan in 2007.

Meeks paid back the loan with interest three years later, only after the FBI began asking questions.

After serving two years in jail in a $50 million mortgage fraud scheme, Ahmad is back in business in Queens, a source told The Post.

“The US-Guyana relationship is crucial for our strategic interests both with Guyana and throughout the western hemisphere,” the Committee spokesman said.

“To say that the Chairman has a close relationship with any particular party in any given country is a gross mischaracterization.”

https://nypost.com/2021/07/03/...paign=site%20buttons