Lindo Creek CoI pins Joint Services
Chairman of the Lindo Creek COI Justice (Ret’d) Donald Trotman.
Chairman of the Lindo Creek COI Justice (Ret’d) Donald Trotman.

…chairman says no evidence ‘Fineman’ gang carried out massacre

GOVERNMENT has been provided with evidence which suggests that the Joint Services, back in 2008 allegedly killed the Lindo Creek miners.

The evidence, in the form of testimonies and experts’ findings, are contained in the Report on the Lindo Creek Commission of Inquiry (COI)- A nation’s search for truth and justice, which was presented to President David Granger on August 2, 2018 by the Chairman, Justice (Ret’d) Donald Trotman.

Speaking on the report, Justice Trotman, in a meeting with media persons on Thursday, said the report detailed a number of findings and put forward a total of 28 recommendations. For a decade, Guyana was divided on who killed the eight diamond miners at Lindo Creek, Upper Berbice River, Region 10. The men’s charred remains were discovered by the camp owner, Leonard Arokium on June 21, 2008. The then People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Government, the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Defence Force have argued that it was the notorious gang led by Rondell ‘Fineman’ Rawlins that had killed the miners, but relatives of the murdered men and persons familiar with the terrain have contended that it was the Joint Services.

In his report, Justice (Ret’d) Trotman points the current administration in the direction of the Joint Services. “I think it is best to say more specifically with more certainty, who did not kill them (the miners),” the Chairman said as he responded to a question posed by this newspaper.

Based on geographical and technical evidence provided by surveyors, evidence offered by civilians including Leonard Arokium, and the visit to the crime scene by the Commission, Justice (Ret’d) Trotman concluded that it was not reasonably possible for the criminal gang to have moved from Christmas Falls, where they had engaged in a shootout with the Police on June 6, 2008, to Lindo Creek in a matter of hours or days while being hunted by the Joint Services. The evidence suggests that the miners were killed between June 7, 2008 and June 21, 2008.

“Putting all of those together, the conclusion of the commission was that it was not reasonably possible for the ‘Fineman’ gang to have gotten into the area from where they were originally located in Christmas Falls. It is not reasonable to expect that they could have gone from Christmas Falls to Lindo Creek to be in a position to have committed the massacre or the murders,” the Chairman explained.

Is there then validity to the claims that it was indeed the Joint Services that had committed the inhumane act? “We wouldn’t say that there is validity to the claim but we would say that there are strong reasons to support the view held by many that they (the miners) were killed by ranks of the Joint Services,” Justice (Ret’d) Trotman responded.
He, however, said there are some unanswered questions.

The front cover of the Lindo Creek COI Report

“What of course remains in some doubt is what ranks of the Joint Services actually did the killing, since they were military and police, defence force and police ranks… Whether they did this on their own or they did this on specific instructions and commands from any superior officer. Or whether they did it by mistake, those are the uncertainties that still hover around the suspicions. Let us say, that the Joint Services might have been the persons, the ranks that did the killings,” he explained.

According to Justice (Ret’d) Trotman, a retired judge who served as Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Grenada, and has more than 50 years of legal experience under his belt, the Commission arrived at its conclusion through process of elimination.
“The reasons were really found by way of elimination that if it wasn’t the ‘Fineman’ gang in the area, (and) there were no other persons in the area according to the evidence…who could have done it,” he said while emphasising that his findings are based on evidence.
“There was no evidence of that, and there was no evidence that people came in, any civilians came in from Kwakwani or any of the surrounding areas or any loggers or other miners in the area, no evidence,” he explained.

He added: “So while we don’t want to lay our heads down on a block and say definitely it was the Joint Services, it seems from a process of elimination and exclusion that it is more likely that if anybody did it at all it was the joint services ranks.”

At the time of the massacre, the Joint Services was conducting a manhunt for the criminal gang between Kwakwani and the UNAMCO Check Point, and along the Kwakwan/Ituni road. The UNAMCO trail is used to access Lindo Creek. An investigation conducted by the Military Criminal Investigation Department (MCID) in 2008 had cleared the Joint Services of the allegation of mass murder. The investigators then had said that the miners might have been victims of a fatal robbery or may have been killed because of their suspected roles as informants of the Joint Service.

When he appeared before the Commission earlier this year, Major Andy Pompey, who spearheaded the investigation into the allegations levelled against the Joint Services, said his findings cleared the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) and the Guyana Police Force (GPF), which had carried out joint operations in the area, of any wrong doing.

Major Pompey, while fielding questions from the Commission’s Counsel Patrice Henry, had said that based on his investigation, which was conducted between June 26, 2008 and July 8, 2008, it could have been possible that the miners were robbed and killed, or killed under the assumption that they were informants. “Possible motive of the killers could have been 1) robbery or 2) assumptions that the miners were informants working for the Joint Services,” Major Pompey told the commission as he read one of the key findings from the GDF investigation.

But Trotman said there was no evidence to support the claim of a robbery while lashing out at the Joint Services for conducting, what he considered as a poor, investigation. “I have to say quite categorically that there was no evidence either of an actual robbery or an intended robbery or whoever did the killings intended to rob the miners, no evidence of that at all so we could not dwell on that supposition or suspicion or allegation,” he told this newspaper.

The COI was established on February 1, 2018 to investigate all matters in relation to the killing of eight miners: Cecil Arokium, Dax Arokium, Horace Drakes, Bonny Harry, Lancelot Lee, Compton Speirs, Nigel Torres and Clifton Berry Wong at Lindo Creek in the Upper Demerara-Upper Berbice Region, on, or, about June 21, 2008.

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