Guyana po­lice say a “go-fast” ves­sel with the Op­po­si­tion Leader Azrud­din Mo­hamed among sev­er­al peo­ple on board, had been in­ter­cept­ed on Tues­day night af­ter it al­leged­ly failed to stop when asked to do so by law en­force­ment per­son­nel.

The Guyana Po­lice Force (GPF) in a state­ment said that about 9:4 pm (lo­cal time), a rou­tine joint mar­itime pa­trol in­volv­ing the Coast Guard and Po­lice ob­served a ‘go-fast’ ves­sel en­ter­ing the mouth of the De­mer­ara Riv­er at a high rate of speed.

Po­lice said the ves­sel was sig­nalled by siren to stop but failed to com­ply, prompt­ing a pur­suit. It was sub­se­quent­ly in­ter­cept­ed at a wharf at Friend­ship, East Bank De­mer­ara.

Po­lice said three three per­sons, in­clud­ing Mo­hamed, were found aboard the ves­sel, and five oth­er per­sons, sus­pect­ed to have trav­elled aboard the ves­sel, were ob­served at the wharf fa­cil­i­ty.

The po­lice said al­so that dur­ing the pur­suit, of­fi­cers re­port­ed ob­serv­ing a bag be­ing thrown from the ves­sel in­to the De­mer­ara Riv­er, but could not de­ter­mine the con­tents of the bag or who threw it.

They said ef­forts are on­go­ing to lo­cate and re­cov­er the bag adding “the Guyana Po­lice Force and Guyana De­fence Force Coast Guard are joint­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent”.

But in a state­ment post­ed on Face­book, WIN Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Odessa Primus, who was among those on the ves­sel, has dis­put­ed the po­lice state­ment.

In a state­ment, Primus said the po­lice had sig­naled their in­tent to have the Op­po­si­tion Leader ar­rest­ed, claim­ing that he need­ed to pro­duce the doc­u­ments for the boat im­me­di­ate­ly. She said the Mr. Mo­hamed in­di­cat­ed that the boat was docked at the time and that he did have any doc­u­ments on him.

She said the po­lice came to search the boat be­cause of some “high speed chase”, but that quick­ly moved to be­ing a sus­pi­cion on il­le­gal sub­stances on the boat. She said a search was con­duct­ed on the boat and its oc­cu­pants and ab­solute­ly noth­ing il­le­gal was found.

The op­po­si­tion said that an­oth­er leg­is­la­tor, Natasha Singh, has been tak­en in­to cus­tody af­ter a bag was found with a li­censed firearm that be­longs to an­oth­er leg­is­la­tor, Dawn Hast­ings, who at the time had re­port­ed­ly stepped off the boat, leav­ing the bag be­hind with the li­censed firearm.

Mo­hamed and his op­po­si­tion col­leagues were re­port­ed­ly re­turn­ing to George­town from Re­gion One af­ter spend­ing the day meet­ing with sur­vivors and rel­a­tives of those who died in the Ju­ly 18 MV Bari­ma fer­ry tragedy, re­gard­ed as one of the coun­try’s worst mar­itime dis­as­ter.

More than 100 peo­ple are re­port­ed to have died in the dis­as­ter.

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Aug 26, CMC