By Shauna Jemmott

DEPUTY Director of Prisons (DDoP) Gladwin Samuels revealed yesterday that there was a hostage situation in the Capital B block of the Georgetown Prisons which resulted in prisoners refusing to comply with his order to vacate the dormitory during the prison riot on March 3.

During cross-examination by the Commission’s Counsel, Excellence Dazzell, Samuels said he was on his way to the Mazaruni jail on the morning of March 3, when he received a phone call from Director of Prisons Carl Graham and was asked to cancel the trip and return to conduct a search operation for prohibited items at the Camp Street jail.

He said while he was in Bartica, Graham told him that part of the operation involved the evacuation of Capital A prisoners in order to sanitize the block of improvised weapons.

He was approaching the main office when Collison was being taken out by prison officers and a number of officers formed a cordon and were conducting searches on prisoners. In less than a minute he went to the tarmac and there was much noise, “which I viewed as a threat. There was a loud banging which indicated to me that a wall was being hit.” He said too that he recognised the sound of steel pounding upon steel and prisoners were hurling verbal threats at officers.
While standing on the catwalk on Capital B, when half of Capital B prisoners had been evacuated, he observed a code green (small) fire, and informed a number of ranks around him by shouting “Fire! Fire!” Officer-in-Charge (OC) at the prison, Superintendent Pilgrim, after hearing him shout, informed staff in the operations room and within the minute he heard the sound of the prison siren alerting officers around that there was an emergency.

HOSTAGE SITUATION

He and Pilgrim made a failed attempt to evacuate the Capital B inmates and the prisoners told him that they were being threatened by other inmates who were at the door. He had observed earlier that Germaine Otto at the door of Capital A and Otto was behaving disorderly while other prisoners hurled threats at the officers.

“They were talking about taking officers lives… they were talking about performing sexual acts on officers,” Samuels said.
He said while the recording of such operations is required whenever this is being executed, in the two years he has been stationed at the Camp Street penitentiary he did not record any search prior to March 3.

“All the searches would have been ordered by me and as far as I’m aware, there is no camcorder to do such,” the DDoP said.
After he and the OC later managed to evacuate the prisoners, they extinguished a fire in Capital B and while he did not order prisoners from Capital A to come over to Capital B, he went back to the tarmac, instructing officer Hutson to “open the door (Capital A) and let those persons who want to come down, come down.”

Samuels said he then heard an officer say “How they gon come out? The door close.”

When he saw the second fire, which was in the Capital A division, it was a code orange (larger) fire and he alerted the officers and repeatedly followed up with Officer-in-Charge Kevin Pilgrim, who told him repeated calls were made to the operations department and the prison sirens sounded again.
At that time, under normal circumstances, the fire service should have been there already, since they were called almost immediately at the sight of the first fire.

After he had realised that the Capital A door was not opening, he gave a command to his officers to open the Capital B door and it was opened. He then heard his ranks telling prisoners in Capital A to vacate Capital A, through the hole in the wall, over into Capital B.
After assessing the situation, he did not send any rank into the neighbouring Capital B division because he did not think it was safe. He said the large pump was malfunctioning, and a two-inch pump which is normally used to send water into the new Capital division was used instead, but it was observed that the hose was not in working order.

Earlier in his testimony, Samuels told the Commission that prisoners told him the reason they were not coming out as ordered was because they were receiving threats, and the prisoners shouted that complaint even while they were supposedly being held hostage by other prisoners. After he had heard that, based on what he observed, those prisoners refused to come out.

He said however the hostage situation was in Capital B and not Capital A.

Responding to questions by Commissioner Dale Erskine, who is a former Director of Prisons, Samuels said at the time of the fire in Capital A, prison officers were unable to apply firefighting and cooling procedures, “because of the hose mechanism problem that we encountered.”

He said too that the new Capital division was a problematic division which housed a high concentration of high-profile prisoners, and whenever they misbehaved their crimes in the prison were committed jointly by a number of the prisoners.

While Samuels was accused by various prisoners of throwing tear gas canisters into the Capital A dormitory while the fire burned, he said he has never in his years there seen any listing in any of the prisons in Guyana of tear gas being part of their available weapons.

Under cross-examination by Attorney-at-law Melvin Duke, Samuels said from the time he entered the prison yard on March 3, he recognised there was chaos and the situation later became more disorderly.

He went to Capital B and in the company of Pilgrim, instructed the prisoners in that department to evacuate the building, but while the Capital B prisoners did not comply, bricks were hurled in his direction.

MAKING THREATS
Samuels said earlier prisoner Germaine Otto, a Capital A prisoner who died in the fire, was in front the door of Capital B. Samuels said while Otto “was very confrontational,” other prisoners were chanting and making threats. He later learnt that the reason the prisoners were not coming out of Capital B was because threats were made to them by other prisoners who were at the door.

He said Otto then went back into Capital A through the hole at the separation wall, and during a second attempt at evacuating the Capital B inmates, after he and Pilgrim stood on the catwalk and drew their weapons, the Capital B prisoners began to exit.

When the CoI continues today, Samuels will be further cross-examined and it is expected that Officer-in-Charge of the Georgetown Prisons, Senior Superintendent Kevin Pilgrim will testify for the first time.

The Commission comprises the chairman, Justice James Patterson, human rights activist Merle Mendonca and retired Director of Prisons, Dale Erskine.