Puzzling turn of events
THE official statements from the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) so far on the death last week of the dangerous Linden `Blackie' London, long on the run from the Police, do not mesh with the allegations in some other sections of the media about the manner of his end. The GDF deployed special units to get the wanted man in collaboration with the Police and two members of the Army's Special Forces were wounded by London, one of them shot in the head and losing his left eye. Soldier Lennox Harvey, according to the Army, "had stormed the fortress-like building in which the notorious London was holding out when he was shot." "After he was shot, he was extracted from the building by his officer commanding Captain Fitzroy Warde and two of his colleagues in another daring feat", the GDF said in one of its official statements on the operation. According to the Army, Mr Harvey and Corporal Lincoln Fraser were wounded "when they stormed the building in which London was holding out." "Harvey, using stealth and with great courage, was able to enter the building and had succeeded in forcing open the door to the room in which London was hiding when he was shot through the left eye", the Army stated. The GDF said it had deployed two sections each from the Special Forces, the Artillery and the Second Infantry Battalion Reserve in the joint operation with the Police. We recount these statements from the Army in light of the line being pushed in some sections of the media that the Army and the Police are at odds over how London met his end. The Army in its statements has confirmed that its troops were part of the operation to take out London, testifying to the bravery of the soldiers Harvey and Fraser who "stormed the fortress-like building" to get him. The soldiers and Police staked out around and moving into the apartment building from where London kept up an almost 12-hour barrage of deadly gunfire were not out on a `baby party' or a Sunday afternoon picnic. Their lives were on the line and the action of the soldiers storming what the Army acknowledged was a fortress-like building does not fit with the picture of men out to take prisoners. The account by the Army of soldier Harvey using stealth and great courage to force open the door to the room in which London was secreted is not exactly that of troops begging the hunted man to lay down his arms and surrender. London was a former member of the same Special Forces of the Army to which Mr Harvey and Mr Fraser belong and was dismissed after he absconded. He seriously wounded Mr Harvey who was stealing closer to London and who will bear that wound from the bandit for the rest of his life. Mr Fraser and a Policeman were also wounded in the attack and it is a little naive to expect that their comrades would have sat meekly on their haunches amid that gunfire barrage and allow the attacker, who had slipped away from the Police several times before, to get away. The Army has stated that it "supports everything" said by the Police on the issue and that there is a "cordial, amicable and professional relationship...between the two organisations". Who then are trying to set the two against each other on this issue and for what purpose?
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