GEORGETOWN, Jul (IPS)  – The U.S. government has again snubbed Guyanese authorities, with whom it has long had a strained relationship, this time over a request for expert help in solving the latest of three mass murders this year.

Late last month, unknown gunmen slaughtered a group of eight diamond miners at a camp in the southeastern Amazonian jungle, where security forces had been hunting a criminal gang blamed for two other sets of killings that clamed 23 lives since January.

Mine owner George Arokium lost both a brother and son to the killers, who also beat their victims with hammers and burned their bodies in a heap. He immediately blamed security forces for carrying out what was widely viewed as one of the most heinous crimes in Guyana in living memory.

Arokium’s contention is that the soldiers and police who were in the general area and anxious to cash in on a 250,000-dollar government bounty killed the miners by mistake after stumbling into the isolated camp about 220 kilometres from the capital, Georgetown.

Authorities have denied involvement in the killings, saying that the Joint Services are highly trained and would not commit extrajudicial executions, even by mistake.

But it was the less than diplomatic snub by the George W. Bush administration that triggered much tongue-wagging in the English-speaking South American nation of 730,000.

Officials had asked the U.S. State Department to fly forensic experts to the jungle and assist in investigating exactly what had happened given Arokium’s relentless claims that security forces were to blame — an argument that had gained traction in the media and cast doubt on the official version of events that gangsters were responsible.

After several weeks of silence, U.S. diplomats told the Bharrat Jagdeo administration that they had no plans to send a team from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to probe anything.

In fairly frank language, Embassy spokesman Rolf Olson said that for one thing, the FBI does not have such teams sitting around waiting to be rushed to crises of such a nature overseas. In addition, he said, the request was made long after local police and medical examiners had walked all over the crime scene, removed the burned bodies, picked up spent ammunition and left the remote area unprotected to intruders and nature, in the midst of the rainy season.

“It is the opinion of the FBI that not much can be achieved with this and we told government so in a diplomatic note,” said Olson.

Later, national security minister Clement Rohee said that U.S. officials had cited “logistical and resource limitations” in turning down the request. What he did not say was that it was the latest in a long line of official diplomatic snubs from Washington, even though successive U.S. envoys have charged the Guyanese government is not doing enough to stem the flow of narco trafficking, and the level of money laundering and organised crime in the country.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has refused requests from authorities to open an office here, saying the country is not secure enough for agents to operate. It services Guyana from neighbouring Trinidad and is now contemplating setting up shop in Suriname — anywhere but Guyana.

Two years ago, Shaheed Roger Khan, a Guyanese businessman with close ties to the highest levels of government, publicly admitted taping and distributing to the media politically embarrassing telephone conversations between then police chief Winston Felix and Basil Williams, a senior member of the main Opposition People’s National Congress Reform.

The government asked the FBI to analyse the tapes to determine whether the voice was the commissioner’s. Washington never reacted to the request, perhaps given the fact that Felix and then army chief Edward Collins had staged coordinated killing raids against suspected drug dealers, many with links to officialdom.

Khan has also been at the centre of at least three other public snubs, one asking U.S. investigators for information pertaining to the death squad he publicly claimed to have six years ago, and another to determine whether government had in fact helped him procure the high-tech spy equipment that was used to tape Felix. Such equipment is only sold to governments.

Based on information emerging from pretrial hearings for Khan in New York, the private death squad that had allegedly worked for government was responsible for 200 killings in about two years. His role is being cited by lawyers to argue that Khan was a crime-fighting patriot rather than a trafficker.

Additionally, four years ago, authorities had sent body tissues from an alleged death squad murder suspect to the U.S. to determine how he was poisoned while under police guard in hospital. Again, the request was met with stony silence from Washington.

Given this scenario, some ordinary members of the public are beginning to wonder whether authorities are not using it as an excuse to kill controversial cases, knowing calls for help will go nowhere.

“Frankly, I don’t believe that the gangsters killed those men [the miners]. Gangsters don’t stick around to waste such time to burn bodies — they run,” businessman Fazil Rahaman told IPS. “But the important thing here is why the government embarrassing us by always asking the U.S. to come to Guyana. It is not looking too good. They should stop.”

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