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Dear Editor,
Guyanese Attorney Sanjeev Datadin, is carrying water in a basket for the Guyana Police Force who is the enforcer for the criminalised ruling ethnocratic PPPC government, for whom he is a Member of Parliament.
Datadin’s boss, Bharrat Jagdeo, specifically, wants to bring down Mr. Rickford Burke, President of the Caribbean Guyana Institute for Democracy (CGID) for exposing racism, extrajudicial killings, and corruption by the government. They despise him because of his influence and access to powerful politicians in the US.
Jagdeo has even threatened to ‘bring down’ Members of the US Congress who are Mr. Burke’s friends. I wish Jagdeo well with his criminal conspiracy to frame Mr. Burke and to manipulate Police to use Police tools in a criminal transnational scheme to repress Mr. Burke constitutional rights in the US. I’m certain that Bharrat Jagdeo will bring himself down in his own conspiracy.
It is in this context that Datadin has been writing in the press presenting bogus, nonsensical arguments to support fictitious and perjurious claims by the Guyana Police Force (GPF) that its officer, Rodwell Sarabo, and one Mark Wasserman, a private citizen in New York, purportedly served Mr. Burke with a summons from a Guyana Magistrate’s court.
Apart from the obvious illegality, Datadin’s argument is not driven by law and logic, but by an agenda of presumed supremacy and the authoritarian principle that the law is what the PPP cabal says it is. CGID rejected their misplaced superiority and despotic governance.
Datadin must stop pretending to know the facts about the GPF espionage exercise at Mr. Burke’s Brooklyn residence on December 16, 2023. He was not an eyewitness and should therefore shut up and disabuse himself of the fanciful nonsense he is attempting to present to the public as facts.
The GPF is lying to the public that this matter is about an alleged attempt to serve Mr. Burke with a Guyana court summons. Mr. Burke was not served with any documents. But this matter is not about a Guyana court summons. This is about a crime that was committed against the United States.
(i) No one served Mr. Burke with anything. Bharrat Jagdeo and the GPF, claimed they have a video recording with a document being read to Mr. Burke and he responded that he understood. This is a blatant and laughable lie! I dare the GPF and Sarabo to file a falsified affidavit to that effect with any court.
(ii) I challenge the GPF to release the video which they gave to Bharrat Jagdeo, and about which he is bluffing, to the public. I’m sure that Sarabo must have informed them that the environment in which he and his accomplice’s criminal activities took place is under heavy surveillance. Hence, the are terrified to release the video they claim to have, because the truth will revealed to be callous liars.
(iii) On December 16, 2023, as Mr. Burke was departing his home, two unidentified men charged onto his premises and up his stairs like bounty hunters. One shouted “Rickford Burke?” They both had guns. Mr. Burke ignored them and ordered them to leave his residence. They refused. Mr. Burke departed his residence and left the men on his stairs. The men have been identified as GPF officer Rodwell Sarabo and Mark Wasserman, a private citizen. Wasserman was later checking through Mr. Burke’s mail.
(iv) The men committed several federal and state crimes. Consequently, Mr. Burke reported the matter to the New York City Police Department (NYPD) which called in federal authorities.
(v) On December 21, the GPF issued a statement admitting that it sent the armed men to Mr. Burke’s home to perform Government of Guyana law enforcement duties, in violation of US federal law, as well as NY state law.
(vi) The GPF statement attempted to justify their illegal action by claiming that “the Magistrate ordered that the ‘defendant summons’ be prepared and served on Rickford Burke to attend the Vigilance Magistrate’s court on the 28th day of March 2024.”…..As such, ….. an Officer of the Guyana Police Force, ASP Rodwell Sarabo left Guyana and travelled to the United States of America with both defendant summons in his possession. “
(vii) On the 16th December 2023, ASP Rodwell Sarabo met with Mark Wesserman, a Process Server based in the United States of America and they served both defendant summons on Rickford Burke at his home… Both defendant summons were read to Rickford Burke and he said he understood.”
(viii) Nothing was read to Mr. Burke. Mr. Burke did not communicate with the men, except to order them off his property. Guyanese have long realized that the GPF is the most dishonest institution in Guyana.
(ix) Notwithstanding the fact that nothing was served on Mr. Burke, let me state unequivocally that no court in Guyana has powers to issue a criminal summons to be served on a person outside Guyana’s borders. Moreover, no member of the GPF has extraterritorial powers to execute GPF functions or serve a court summons outside of Guyana. Furthermore, no US law or treaty confers any such powers on Guyanese courts or Police officers. For Datadin to argue otherwise is just plain foolishness.
(x) This is why the GPF falsified to the court that Mr. Burke currently lives in Guyana and purportedly committed the alleged crimes while in Guyana, although it is public knowledge that Mr. Burke lives in the US and has not traveled to Guyana in 25 years.
(xi) Datadin is feigning knowledge about the GPF charade in New York and is pontificating thereon in absolute ignorance. The only convincing argument he is establishing is that the cabal in Georgetown has a different standard of justice for certain types of citizens – African Guyanese. THEY WILL NEVER TRY THAT WITH AN EAST INDIAN!
(xii) It is painful to witness a lawyer shred his professional integrity to proffer fallacious arguments and half-baked theories which portray him as a non-serious lawyer in pursuit of his political ambition. In this regard, Datadin is a serial offender given his role in the heinous persecution of Mark Benschop. But we know that the agenda is never to argue the law, but to signal to the court to invent a basis to accept the falsified attestation from the GPF.
(xiii) The fraudulent charges against Mr. Burke for his exercise of free speech, which is a United States constitutionally protected right establishes the PPP regime’s transnational effort to repress Mr. Burke’s free speech through criminal charges.
(vix) Bharrat Jagdeo has made this case, as well as the fact that he is colluding with the Police and orchestrating this bogus case against Mr, Burke his cause celebre. Although this matter is subjudice Bharrat Jagdeo, a Vice President of Guyana, has been publicly commenting every day on purported evidence and directing how the matter would proceed in court.
(XV) Jagdeo has said a trial will proceed without Mr. Burke, thereby telegraphing that he has this all planned out. This is a mockery and affront to the judiciary. But I implore Jagdeo to keep speaking, because every time he opens his mouth he provides more evidence of the regime’s transnational repression crimes.
(xv). Jagdeo and datadin know that Mr. Burke committed no offence. Thus there are pursuing a public, ethnic lynching and a smear campaign of an Afro-Guyanese leader who speaks their despotic regime. But I warn, that the war they started will not end well for them!
Yours truly,
Richard Millington, Esq
Director of Communications
Caribbean Guyana Institute for Democracy (CGID)