The confession of George Bacchus’s killer has brought into question the number of people involved or have now joined what the People’s National Congress Reform calls a conspiracy at work.
The confessed killer implicated the wife of a businessman, charged with murder, whom he claimed offered him $200,000 to execute Bacchus.
At yesterday’s press briefing the main opposition party stated that whoever is paying whom and acting as agents for others is enough to launch a thorough investigation in an effort to get to the bottom of this bloody conspiracy.
Where is the revelation of a death squad, and the alleged involvement of the state in its operations and reported cover-up attempts, ultimately leading to?
According to leader of the PNC/R, Mr. Robert Corbin, “anarchy”.
He added that the allegations and subsequent events are symptoms of a sick state in which the rule of law has been destroyed.
The concern was raised that the present crises warrants an inquiry by the international community. The party said that the way things are going and if they continue, the international community may very well step in.
But has the PNC/R ever offered Bacchus protection? Mr. Corbin said, “He came to me with valuable information and I aired a tape with his concerns that his life was threatened as a result of the disclosures.
“We also advised Bacchus on security matters and he felt that by exposing these attempts on his life, and the fact that people were constantly observing him, the would-be killers would have been dissuaded.”
Bacchus thought that this would have been the best security for him, since the capacity of the squad was so reinforced that its members would have tracked him down in any part of Guyana.
Corbin said that at no time did the PNC/R offer protection to Bacchus since clearly it was a job for the police.
As far as the police investigation is concerned, the party stated that it is encouraged by the words of the Police Commissioner, that the force will follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Would it not be counter-productive, if the PNC/R delays the release of affidavits of any other potential witnesses, if any, as was done in Bacchus’s case? “It would be too dangerous to release them now, judging from what happened to Bacchus,” Corbin responded. He said that contrary to reports that the party kept the affidavits for too long, what Bacchus revealed in them is nothing new and has been widely publicized.
“We were hoping that the Commission of Inquiry announced more than four weeks ago, would have made some progress. So, the affidavits and tapes in our possession were, instead, handed over to the police.”
The party stated, that it wonders why these previously silent voices that are now concerned about submission of evidence to the Police and/or whether the PNCR should have protected Bacchus, were not vocal before his death, demanding the independent and impartial inquiry into the allegations Bacchus made since January this year.