Escape questions

Smallie, as he is known, was probably the most dangerous inmate in the Guyana prison system. He was subject to rules for death row prisoners which state that only a prison staff member, a medical officer or a minister of religion can have access to him. Anyone beyond that has to have a written permit from the Director of Prisons. Yet on May 19 he was allowed to meet with a nonGuyanese woman and while he was being escorted back to the cells he escaped.

The following day acting Director of Prisons Nicklon Elliot was quoted as saying, “We are currently reviewing our standard operating procedures to see what went wrong and how we [can] prevent something like that from happening because one escape is too much.” Apart from observing that not all escapes will generate the same degree of public alarm, it should be said that on the evidence currently in the public domain the problem did not lie with the standard operating procedures as such, but in the fact that they were deliberately contravened. It does not matter how many sensible protocols are in place, they will mean nothing if they are breached.

Since it can be inferred that the Director of Prisons did not give authorisation for Mark Royden Williams to receive a visit from a nonnational who it is reasonable to assume was not a relative, then clearly the prison authorities at some level made that possible. The ‘inside’ dimension of what happened was recognised immediately by Home Affairs Minister Robeson Benn who said in his first press conference on the matter that there may have been persons within the prison system who were involved. Since then six people have been charged in connection with the escape four of whom were prison officers and included the Superintendent of Mazaruni Prison. The two civilians were a Venezuelan and someone described as a businessman.

All kinds of other questions have been asked by this newspaper in last Monday’s editorial as well as by a number of other commentators, not the least of which was whether Smallie was really shackled at the time he was being transferred back to his quarters as has been said. Anyone with a modicum of swimming ability will have a question mark over the fact that the escapee, feet supposedly shackled, was able to jump into the water and swim to the boat. It might be added that even the most impressive of athletes would have found running to the riverside at any kind of pace well-nigh impossible when so encumbered.

Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton asked in a statement who was monitoring the conversation between the prisoner and the visitor. Given the circumstances of the case he can probably safely

assume no one in authority was listening in, or if they were they did not alert anyone.

As was asked in Monday’s editorial does the prison service not have its own river craft to patrol the approaches to the prison, and why did a boat loitering around the area for so long not cause any suspicions? The answer can probably be found in a casual approach to security in general, and in this particular instance in an intentional surveillance failure.

But at the bottom of it all it has to be asked exactly why was Smallie sprung from what is supposed to be Guyana’s most secure prison? It was not for nothing that the British colonial authorities in 1842 established a penal settlement some 46 miles up the Essequibo River which is only accessible by water. Behind it was the forest, representing a survival challenge for even the most hardened would-be escapee. All that can be said is that the location did not present much of a challenge to those who organised the escape of Mark Royden Williams a week last Friday.

It must have taken a considerable amount of finance to set up the escape plot, so who was prepared to expend that amount of money to set him free and why? Or is it that he personally still has financial resources at his disposal held for him outside the prison which he utilized to arrange his own escape? He would no doubt have had the means to do so, since cellphones and chargers are routinely found in Guyana’s jails, including the Mazaruni. In addition, Smallie’s capacity for organising prison escapes was certainly demonstrated in the case of the Camp Street prison fire in 2017 although he was recaptured three months later travelling in a minibus at Weldaad. Having discovered that hiding in plain sight is no guarantee of long-term liberty one might have thought that this time he had a more elaborate plan for maintaining his freedom.

Even if he did have a hand in arranging the escape, if someone else paid for it the question again has to be asked to what end? One of the men in the boat was a former murder accused, so was he a onetime member of Smallie’s gang, and are we looking again at its reconstitution? Even if that were the case, it would not be so easy for them to operate in urbanized areas as was the case in the past, and in any case, where would they base themselves initially without attracting immediate attention? Whatever their intended destination it is clear they expected to spend time in the bush, since the boat owner whose vessel they commandeered told the police they had kerosene and rations with them.

An important detail is that the men had three assault rifles in their possession. While it is widely rumoured that hand guns of one kind or another are not so difficult to obtain in this country, AK-47s and the like are generally associated with the drug trade. So is this part of some elaborate plan involving narcotics, or those allied to the narcotics business? And/or is there some Venezuelan connection? Among other possibilities, the bad lands of the Cuyuni offer all kinds of options for criminal activity.

One has to wonder how good the criminals’ geography is, since they were forced to leave the vessel they had taken over somewhere in the vicinity of the BK quarry because its engine had seized up. In unmarked forest they would have to have a good idea of where they were headed, unless they had pre-arranged a period of recuperation at some camp – like a mining camp, for example. And even if their final destination is the Cuyuni, which it may well not be, it is still a long way there through difficult terrain from the Mazaruni.

So here we have a grand failure of intelligence and security, not to mention the prison service. We don’t know where the escapee and company are going, or why. All we have to depend on now are the Joint Services, particularly the GDF which is more accustomed to dealing with the interior than the police, and possibly alert members of the indigenous community who might be able to help locate Smallie and his accomplices. Bartica has a right to feel nervous, but then so do we all.

In the absence of answers from the government to a number of questions we can only repeat what was said on Monday, namely that there should be a swift one-person commission of inquiry into the events of May 18th and 19th. Minister Benn told the media last Saturday that he wanted to say “how upset we are at this situation.” He should be a lot more than ‘upset’. Everyone else is.