HEAD of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon yesterday urged patience for Police to prepare a good case and allow justice to operate in the case of three heavily armed men detained by the Guyana Defence Force at Good Hope, East Coast Demerara early last month.

He made the comment while responding to speculations that the administration is somewhat reluctant to prosecute the men found with high powered weapons and sophisticated equipment including a laptop computer capable of intercepting cellular calls, and a plan of the city.

The three men yesterday appeared before a magistrate on the East Coast Demerara on charges related to the case and were placed on bail.

"There obviously must be something formidable in having the evidence and all of the preliminary enquiries concluded to allow for a successful prosecution," Luncheon told his regular post-Cabinet news conference yesterday at the Office of the President in Georgetown.

He said were the prosecution to go ahead, without adequate evidence and information, to try and convict the men, and should this evidence prove insufficient and the case dismissed, then the same persons pushing for it would criticise the Government and say that it concocted or conspired to free them.

Simultaneously, when the prosecution takes its time in trying to gather sufficient evidence to make a good case, the same persons are criticising the Government for taking too long or trying to downplay the whole issue, he said.

"One of the difficulties that our administration, and administrations in general face, is the criticisms that while under certain circumstances action is taken that is deemed to be precipitate, the criticism is that you didn't study the thing properly, but you gone and act...

"...there is also the other criticism that you took too long, and inherent in this notion of taking too long is this motive of thwarting the purpose or some likely course of action," Luncheon said.

"I think you would want to recognise that the legal system and the legal mechanisms are special and they would have to be attended to in the most comprehensive of ways were we to achieve a successful prosecution," he commented.

"Heaven forbid, an early move to trial and a dismissal (granted), I am certain you will hear this is concocted and the administration conspired to thwart the wheels of justice and ensure that the case was dismissed or some trivial sentence applied or something like that. (So) we are really locked between a rock and a hard place," Luncheon added.

"...but as I urged earlier, let us be patient and allow the Police and the law enforcement agencies to prepare a good case and allow justice to operate," the Cabinet Secretary appealed.

Asked yesterday why there were no immediate moves to prosecute the men, Luncheon said immediate moves to prosecution may very well have been possible, but the Police, State legal counsel and prosecutors are the ones that help determine what charges are to be laid and the gravity of the situation.

He suggested that it is in this context that one should see the delay in going to immediate prosecution and "not up-front assume that the delays are intended maybe to drop the case or allow the people to get away or whatever".

Luncheon said an outcome that satisfies more than just cursory scrutiny is to be obtained and that these sensitive cases need to be addressed properly.

He also recalled that some of the influences that were at play in the development of the current levels and aspects of the crime situation remain political violence, drugs and narco-trafficking and non-narcotic criminal-related activity.

"Nothing which has occurred so far has led me, or for that matter the administration, to change or to amend those perspectives," he said.

Luncheon also said that regarding security issues, Cabinet at its meeting on Tuesday last, reviewed the earliest available results of the recently recommenced joint exercise by the Police and the Army.

According to him, Cabinet felt that there was an evidently organised civilian activity to prevent law enforcement officers from entering Buxton to search and to apprehend wanted criminals known to be located within that community.

He said Cabinet also noted "the impact of the continued execution of Policemen, particularly the impact on the morale of the Guyana Police Force which remains a matter of deep concern to the administration".

Cabinet noted, too, the validity of the administration's contention about terrorism being unleashed in Georgetown was attested to "by the obviously and centrally directed arson attempts at (several) gas stations".

"It is the Office of the President's firm conviction in 2003 that security issues will remain in the forefront, in the urban areas in particular, and much greater attention would have to be paid by our citizens and categories of our citizens, particularly business people, to complement the actions being taken by the civilian law enforcement agencies in response to the crisis," Luncheon said.

He also declared that, fundamentally, the troubled and violence-prone East Coast Demerara village of Buxton "has been penetrated and is the home to a large number of criminals, wanted criminals, and this is not a matter of dispute".