Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

GUYANA: Fugitive’s Long Run Ends

Bert Wilkinson

GEORGETOWN, Mar 27 1996 (IPS) - The neighbours will be talking about it for years to come — how a pirated television programme helped nab a suspected murderer and stirred up again the thorny extradition issue.

For nearly three years, North American John Anthony Diaz has been living in Guyana under the assumed name of Gregory Scott Grayson, say the local police.

He had apparently led U.S. police on a merry chase through Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Holland, Britain and Venezuela, where they lost his trail. Diaz is wanted in Massachussetts for the July 1993 murder of Dawn Brown, a sister of his former girlfriend.

The police say he had planned to kill the girlfriend Kimberlee, but mistakenly shot Brown at point blank range.

Neither Linda Jairam, the Guyanese mother of two he married in 1993 nor co-workers at the Guyenterprise Advertising Agency where he worked had any inkling of his shadowy past.

Then at the crack of dawn last Friday local police surrounded his Alberttown, northern Georgetown home, and took him into custody. The revelation not only shocked his wife, two stepdaughters and neighbours, but it also surprised police at the district’s station building, a mere six houses down the road.

Unknowing to Diaz, his new life began to unravel in a big way a week ago when the U.S. television station NBC ran a segment of its Unsolved Mysteries programme profiling Diaz.

Many Guyanese saw the programme, pirated by a local station via satellite. Few paid any attention to it except a fellow club member from the Kingsrow Barbell Club where Diaz had worked out for the past 13 months. The club member called the number producers had flashed on the screen, saying a man fitting the description frequently worked out at a city gym. Once that happened U.S. authorities and the local police began staking out Diaz’s wooden three-bedroom home. Detectives moved on him early Friday. He did not resist arrest. The incident will undoubtedly embroil the local courts in another long round of extradition battles.

Indications are that the two U.S. policemen waiting to take Diaz back to Boston would have a long wait as lawyers have already started the battle to delay his expulsion.

The state is not anxious to be engaged in a prolonged judicial exercise to extradite the suspect as lawyers have usually opted to take cases the full course, reaching as far as the appeals court. The government wants to dispose of what is widely regarded as a pure North American problem and state prosecutors have switched tactics by asking immigration police to deport Diaz because it is simplier. “It is certainly easier and quicker,” notes Yonette Cummings, Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions. Immigration police can throw the book at the detainee for any number of breaches, including entering Guyana with a false passport.

Diaz’s attorneys are not prepared to give in that easily. One has already won a high court injunction to prevent his deportation. Nigel Hughes is challenging the state’s move, saying neither the two U.S. state police nor local authorities have positively identified Grayson as John Anthony Diaz.

Many here are already convinced of his guilt however, in light of the fact that he allegedly admitted to Guyenterprise that he was in his current predicament because “something in my past had caught up with me.”

In the four or so previous cases using the controversial extradition route, defence lawyers have delayed departure for close to a year. Their main bone of contention is government’s use of an extradition treaty dating back to the 1930s. Defence lawyers claim the treaty died with the colonial constitution that was replaced at independence from Britain in 1966. In every case, however, the local appeals court has ruled for the state, maintaining that the treaty is still valid.

Meanwhile Vic Insanally, Diaz’s former boss said Diaz called to apologise, asking to be remembered as a model worker rather than a killer, fleeing the justice system.

At the Kingsrow Barbell Club where he worked out, owner Claude Charles said he once asked Diaz why he was so withdrawn. “The answer was that is how he was,” says Charles. Neighbours say his introverted attitude has now been explained.

 
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