FORMER Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee has criticized Government for the recent escape of convicted drug trafficker Barry Dataram, saying that this should not have happened with all the institutionalised security arrangements in place.Speaking at a People’s Progressive Party news conference on Monday, Rohee said the escape of Dataram “shows that the security arrangements of the state, which President Granger likes to boast so much about, is a disaster.

“Could you image if this had happened while the PPP/C were in office what would have been the outcry?” he asked.

Rohee then asked who had facilitated Dataram with fake documents. He wanted to know whether the Department of Citizenship was in any way involved.
“Was he escorted out of the country? If so, by whom? Was a deal cut in exchange for his escape?” Rohee asked.

The PPP General Secretary further asked how did law enforcement come to know that Dataram had crossed the Corentyne River to Suriname, and instead did not go to Brazil or Venezuela?

“How come there is such close cooperation between law enforcement in Guyana and Suriname, yet he was allowed to slip over the border? Did he really slip over the border? And which border did he slip across? Who is in Dataram’s pockets? Who was paid off to ensure that his movements were not closely monitored?” Rohee asked.

His other questions were: “How did he manage to elude Operation Dragnet, which we are told was a great success when in fact it was a big failure? Dataram’s escape alone shows that. How come he was able to know when and where road blocks were set up, and to avoid them?”

According to Rohee, the entire episode is not only laughable, but is a shame and disgrace; and he asked whether another Commission of Inquiry would be set up to investigate this great escape.

“Mr. Granger proudly proclaims that drug trafficking is the mother of all crimes. It’s strange that Mr. Granger would now tell us this when, according to Stabroek News, he is the ‘most security attuned President the country has ever had, and with his vast experience in the armed services and intelligence gathering.

“I have this to say: If drug trafficking is the mother of all crimes, then Granger’s administration is the father of all excuses,” Rohee declared.

“Harping back to what the APNU+AFC had said of the PPP/C government’s track record in fighting drug trafficking will not solve anything; and in any case, Mr. Granger should move away from speculation and hypothetical propositions about the sources of crime in a Guyana context, and present the statistics and the evidence to justify his assumption. He hasn’t done so, yet he is bold enough to make these reckless statements,” Rohee declared.

Rohee told the news conference that President Granger had told the nation that: A national anti-narcotics agency has been established; he chairs, every week, a National Security Committee; a DEA Office has been established in Guyana; the National Drug Strategy Master Plan was re-launched.

“Yet,” he said, “with all these institutional arrangements in place, Mr. Dataram was allowed to escape. If Mr. Granger couldn’t stop Dataram from escaping, how will he bring an end to narco-trafficking?” Rohee questioned.

According to Rohee, President Granger has also complained that law enforcement does not have boats, planes, vehicles and ATVs. “Well,” he declared, “what is stopping the Granger Administration from procuring these items for law enforcement, when, while they were in the Opposition, they pressed for these items to be procured for law enforcement? However, now that they are in the Government, there is nothing stopping them from buying these items for law enforcement.

“Again, all we are hearing are excuses and more excuses from the father of all excuses,” Rohee declared.

President Granger last week urged members of the local law enforcement community to work with their counterparts in neighbouring countries and to use every possible legitimate avenue to locate and transport Dataram back to Guyana. He said that while he will not lay blame at the feet of any agency or individual, Dataram’s flight from Guyana was something which could have been avoided.

In yesterday’s recording of the Ministry of the Presidency’s weekly television programme The Public Interest, President Granger told journalists that information suggests that Dataram is not a Guyanese, and he might have absconded using a passport not issued by the Government of Guyana. The President assured the media, though, that the police commissioner has been asked to make every effort to locate the suspect.

“…so my information is that he is not travelling on a Guyanese passport. So after his disappearance — and we weren’t aware of his disappearance — we continue to work with our partners in the Caribbean to bring him to justice. If he is in Suriname, as is suspected, the commissioner of police has been instructed to try to ascertain his whereabouts in neighbouring countries.

“But he is not using a Guyana passport, that much we know,” the Head of State said.

Magistrate Judy Latchman last week found the self-confessed drug lord guilty of being in possession of a quantity of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking. In his absence, he was sentenced to 60 months’ imprisonment and fined Gy$164,268,000. However, the charge was dismissed against his common-law wife Anjanie Boodnarine, as well as Kevin Charran and Trevor Gouveia.

Arrest warrants have been issued for Dataram and Boodnarine, who failed to turned up at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Courts on September 20 and September 23 for their trial. They have since not been seen or heard from. They were on bail pending the outcome of the case.

“Mr. Dataram is a person of interest. He is a well-known character in Guyana, and I would expect that even though the judicial branch is separate, there should be a greater level of alertness on the part of the magistracy, in the judiciary, in matters like this; and I don’t regard it as a failing on the part of law-enforcement agencies, but it is definitely an error which ought to have been avoided.

“The danger posed in having somebody who is now a convict out there out of the jurisdiction is going to be harmful to our national interest; so I would urge the law-enforcement agencies to alert their counterparts in neighbouring states,” President Granger said.