I’m out for the last time

STATE witness Richard Bickram yesterday walked out the Witness Protection Programme safe house for yet another time, but swears this is his last.

“I am fed up,” a depressed Bickram, 38, told Newsday minutes after walking into our offices from his safe house. “The programme is the worst; the witnesses are frustrated and nobody cares. “Imagine on Tuesday I started bleeding from my anus and when I ask the officers about seeing a doctor they told me either I spend my own money, or wait until I bleed again because they have none. “I am a diabetic and heart sufferer plus my family has a history of cancer. Am I to die before I get some attention? This programme is only about promises. “When we were first asked to enter the programme, we were promised that we would be taken care of,  but that was an illusion. “It is only pain and suffering.”

Bickram was placed in the State Witness Protection programme in 2000 by the police after he admitted working for the former United National Congress government to organise their “voters padding” exercise during its 1995 and 2000 general election campaign. His evidence led to the arrest and charging of former UNC activist Suresh Maharaj and others with voter padding, and also partly the toppling of the UNC goverment. Evidence given before  a Commission of Inquiry in camera was dissallowed as it implicated several other persons, including commissioners of the Election and Boundaries Commission. This evidence was documented and handed over to the court and is now part of the State’s case against Maharaj and others.

“I am sorry for what I did, better I had let the UNC kick me than labour with these corrupt people in the PNM. At present I don’t think I want to go to court again. “When I offered my information to the PNM in 2000, its general secretary Martin Joseph (now Minister of National Security) and chairman Lenny Saith (Minister of Public Information and Administration) quickly took me in and promised to take care of me. “Once they got into power these two gentlemen refused to talk to me, but I want the (US)$100,000 ($20,000 for each marginal constituency)  that they promised. The PNM used me. “I would advise anyone not to get in the programme, it is just suffering...better you fight it outside by yourself because you become a zombie, a nothing, almost a vagrant there. “Even Prime Minister Patrick Manning has refused to talk to me. “Right now almost all the persons in the programme want to walk out, I am the person who is fed up the most and decided to leave.”

This would be  the fourth time in three years Bickram has walked out. “I know walking out is a dangerous thing because I could be killed. “I also know if I am killed it is either the police or the PNM because of the information of their corruption I have.  I was hassled to fabricate and extend my evidence to sink the UNC.” Two attempts have already been made on Bickram’s life in St Vincent and Grenada while also in the programme.