By Gerald V. Paul

Guyana’s Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall has been accused by the online Kaieteur News publisher Glenn Lall of expressing plans to kill him.

Nandlall was taped in a conversation with Kaieteur News senior reporter Leonard Gildarie and is heard saying, “When he start to publish that I go and spy pun he and all kinda f***ing madness, yuh nah see deh f*** ing tempo change after that?”

Nandlall admitted he was the person recorded in a conversation with the journalist, making what Lall interprets as death threats against him and his staff.

Lall based his interpretation of what Nandlall meant from the minister’s use of Guyanese dialect laced with expletives. Nandlall said, in part:

“No, hear nah, you know how it gun (go / will) stop? Somebody gun go into Kaieteur … You see everybody nah gat, as I told Adam (the editor) today … I said Adam, everybody don’t just … everybody, wait hold on … everybody got weapons, right?

“When you continue to attack people like that they have no way of responding they gun just walk with their weapon into that same f***ing Saffon Street office (on Aug. 8, 2006, five pressmen were gunned down execution-style at the Eccles printer of Kaieteur News) and wha come suh do, and innocent … Peter pay fuh f***ing Paul in deh one day.”

Who taped the conversation has not been revealed.

Both sides have retained lawyers. Lall has filed an official complaint against Nandlall with the Guyana Police Force.

In defending Nandlall, the government said it “condemns in the strongest possible language the despicable act of a national newspaper to distort and manipulate a private conversation of a government minister whose conversation was illegally recorded and distorted and broadcast.”

  death threat, Guyana, prison