Government plans to conduct Commission of Inquiry into early 2000's crime wave

Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo has announced that the Government intends to launch a Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the crime wave that rocked the nation in the early 2000s.

The announcement came days after the Government was grilled by the UN Human Rights Committee on its failure to launch an inquiry into the crime wave, which spanned 2002 to 2009.

In making the announcement during his last press conference, the Vice President said that it was the previous administration that indicated to the UN Human Rights Committee that a COI would be launched into the crime wave.

“The Government will be going ahead with this COI because the UN wants it, Granger wanted it and I hope that there will be no prevarication anymore, there shall be a COI in what took place,” Mr Jagdeo said.

Mr. Jagdeo was the President of Guyana during the haunting crime wave, and it was during that period that the country was rocked by three massacres and scores of cases of executions and extra judicical killings.

In 2018, the APNU+AFC promised a full investigation into the deaths of the hundreds of Guyanese, including the former Minister of Agriculture, Satyadeow Sawh.

Vice President Jagdeo said the COI would reveal what is already established in the police report, as he dismissed the claim that 400 plus young afro-Guyanese men were killed during the crime wave.

“But even it is 400, they used to say it was 400 black young men killed by the PPP – that’s not true if you look at what happened in that period. Secondly, we know about leaders from the PNC who were supplying them with materials, and who used to visit the gangs,” the Vice President said.

In its most recent review on Guyana, the UN Human Rights Committee said it is concerned that the alleged extrajudicial killings that occurred between 2002 and 2006 have not been adequately investigated, and prosecuted, and the perpetrators were not duly sanctioned despite a commitment to launch a Presidential COI.