Latest update April 23rd, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 08, 2016 News
Former inmate of the Camp Street jail Patrick Narine yesterday opined that Officer-in-Charge of the
Georgetown Prison, Superintendent Kevin Pilgrim, was unfit to manage the affairs of a prison.
Narine was giving evidence at the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the deaths of 17 inmates who were killed in the Camp Street unrest on March 3.
He stated that if someone was an officer-in-charge of a jail and that person tells prisoners that he/she will lock them up in one cell and let them kill each other and then he/she will do the necessary paperwork, that person is incompetent to manage the affairs of a prison.
Defence Attorney Selwyn Pieters, who is representing the interest of the Guyana Prison Service, questioned Narine’s qualification to make such an assertion.
“Do you have a degree sir?” he jabbed.
“You have no competence to make that assertion,” he continued after Narine did not respond to his question. “Your mother would have told you that if you and her were fighting and you were not listening to her instructions. ‘Y’all kill y’all self.’ That’s a Guyanese thing—my grandmother would have told me that!” Pieters argued further.
Narine, however, appeared to be unmoved by his statement.
“That’s why it’s my opinion. It is not a fact, it’s an opinion. Please don’t insult my intelligence or try to put words in my mouth like you did to other prisoners in this COI,” he lashed back, stating that Pilgrim should have acted better given his position.
“If you are an officer-in-charge of a jail and you are going to tell the general population ‘we are going to lock you in a cell and let you kill each other, I am going to do the necessary paperwork’ then you can’t be fit.”
He went on to further describe the death of the 17 inmates as a “massacre”.
“If a man like Mr Hazel were in that jail it would not have happened – these officers look into prisoners’ problems…these men I would say are capable of running a prison,” he stated.
Narine testified that it was Deputy Prisons Director Gladwin Samuels who had ordered that the door to the Capital A section be closed prior to the fire inside that resulted in the death and injuries of prisoners.
He said while he was incarcerated, he was looking through his cell when he heard Samuels passing instructions to lock the door with the prisoners inside.
“He said lock the door and let them burn,” Narine said, recalling hearing his fellow inmates screaming for someone to open the door.
But after awhile, he said the screaming stopped, and he assumed they were already dead. He said there were only air holes in the block, so there was no way for water to get in until the door was opened. He also testified to witnessing officers assaulting prisoners while they were taking them out of the cells. He said that afterward he confronted Samuels and told him what he did was wrong. “I was upset,” he recounted.
In a previous session, Pieters had told reporters that the prison had already submitted video evidence to the CoI to prove efforts were indeed made to save the men from the fire.
Officer Samuels was sent on six weeks’ leave in the wake of the allegations levelled against him by inmates after the unrest.
Pilgrim had publicly apologized for the incidence, stating that there was no excuse for what had transpired that day.
“I would first want to say on my behalf that I am sorry…I know saying sorry is not an excuse, as the Minister would have made mention that a Commission of Inquiry would be launched and that Commission of Inquiry would do a detailed investigation,” he said.
“I don’t have to wait on an inquiry or an investigation to simply say sorry, because I am responsible for a prison location…Like a soldier, you have to be responsible for everyone under your charge,” he said.
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