GDF silent on AK-47 report
Kaieteur News
January 17, 2007
The Guyana Defence Force remains tightlipped on reports that a top-ranking officer has been linked to telephone calls relating to the recovery of two AK-47s and a pistol that disappeared from army headquarters in February last year.
This newspaper had reported that the top-ranking officer's cellular phone was traced to a call that alerted investigators to the whereabouts of two of the missing weapons.
This has led to President Bharrat Jagdeo instructing the Police to launch an investigation into the matter.
When contacted yesterday, an army spokesman told this newspaper that the GDF will not be responding to the article at the present time.
He explained that the information contained in the article did not emanate from the army, and as such the GDF will not be responding.
He declined to comment further, but suggested that since the article had indicated that the Police were called in to investigate, that body should be questioned about the investigation.
Acting Police Commissioner Henry Greene was reportedly out of the country and could not be reached for a comment.
Government officials are also tightlipped on the report, and according to one senior Government functionary, the administration will await the outcome of any investigation that has been launched.
According to the Government functionary, as far as he is aware, no official report on the weapons' disappearance has been presented to the administration, although an investigation has been ongoing for almost one year.
Yesterday, Kaieteur News reported that the top-ranking GDF officer could be interdicted from duty, along with another senior counterpart, to facilitate the investigation ordered by the President.
In addition, the top-ranking officer could also face criminal charges where possible. This newspaper was reliably informed that the spotlight began to shine on the high ranking officer on the evidence of at least two telephone calls that led to the recovery of two of the AK-47s and a pistol that were among the missing set of weapons.
According to a source, on September 26 last, information was received from an anonymous caller who stated that there are some AK-47s hidden in a West Coast Berbice location. An operation was ordered, and three AK-47s were recovered in a bag that was buried in an abandoned plot of land. Two of the weapons were identified as the property of the Guyana Defence Force.
Then, on December 10 last year, information was received from another anonymous caller, who informed about the location of a bag.
Another operation was ordered, and a bag containing a pistol suspected to be one of the missing GDF pistols, among other items, was discovered.
The nature of the discovery warranted an intervention at the highest possible level, due to the involvement of such a senior officer.
Additionally, it was unsure who else is involved in the conspiracy of the theft of the weapons and the attempt to recover them in a piece-meal fashion after a seemingly failed plot. This led to a series of high level meetings by the political directorate, and a decision is pending.
Last week, Kaieteur News reported that there was a major shake-up of the GDF team that was mandated to investigate the disappearance of the weapons since it was felt that the probe was being compromised. A few days later, the army issued a swift response labelling the article as sensational.
Chief-of-Staff Eddie Collins later confirmed that a senior officer, along with a Warrant Officer, will be court marshalled.
He, however, did not identify them.