Georgetown : It is time for the coalition government APNU/AFC to come clean as to how many inmates not accounted for since the Camp street jail break and fire on Sunday July 9th 2017. Initially the Director of Prisons, Gladwin Samuels had indicated that there were 1018 inmates being the last count before the July 9th catastrophe. At the night of the fire which destroyed all the wooden buildings of the 133 year old prison, inmates were rushed out and placed on the streets and sidewalk outside of the camp street jail. There were reports of congestion at the time where members of the public were mixing with some inmates on the side walk.
It was first reported that four men escaped after shooting a prison officer and injuring several others escaping through the main gate of the jail and hijacked a car nearby. The four Stafrei Alexander, Cobena Stephens aka “OJ”, Mark Royden Williams and Uree Varswyk are still at large after releasing the driver of the hijacked car.
Over a 1000 inmates were removed from the road and trucked to a pasture at Lusignan Prison on the East Coast of Demerara. Information reaching this publication from sources close to a senior Government official and Army personnel that there may be a possible case of over a hundred inmates not accounted for since July 9th, 2017.
There was a process of reduced bail and persons to be released under a month’s time early to reduce the congestion for housing the camp street inmates. At that time questions were raised of the correct number of inmates accounted for but figures were coming differently from the Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan to that from the Director of Prisons. Some 400 inmates were transferred to Timehri, Mazaruni and New Amsterdam Prisons which were all over crowded.
Minister Ramjattan had said too 210 prisoners that initially moved to Lusignan Prison’s main building and 90 “real bad ones” left in a pasture. However that pasture figure was 99 revealed by Samuels after the locking down checked last Sunday at 4pm, 104 in a new holding area and 136 in Lusignan Prisons. Sunday night into Monday morning 13 inmates dug their way out of the pasture and escaped. Seven so far have been recaptured.
Samuels in a television interview earlier this month said a lot of the Camp street inmates records were destroyed but that can be recovered over a period of time getting the relevant information from the Guyana Police Force and the courts since the prisoner’s records of convictions would have been in their data base before handing over to the Guyana Prison Service.
So there is no direct figure to give a complete tally.
The Government through the Minister of Security, Ramjattan also disclosed that there were no remains of human bones during the clean-up of the debris at the jail site, but a source also revealed that there were human bones and skeleton found.
The Director of Prisons, Samuels never make known how many inmates were in wheel chairs and how they managed to escape the fire. There are reports of several inmates that were confined to wheel chairs at the time of the fire.
Word is now out on the streets that there may be a cover up by government because of public panic and incompetence as to really how many inmates are missing.
Relatives of some of the inmates that usually take food at camp street jail on a daily basis had voiced their concerns that since the July 9th fire, they are not aware which prison their families are in and don’t know if they are dead or alive.
Sections of the society including the main opposition have called for Minister Ramjattan to resign since under his watch there were two fires at the camp street jail and now two prison break outs.
However, the Minister at a media conference said resignation does not associates with him.
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