Murder accused, Mark Thomas, who is alleged to have had links to a death squad, says he worked for the PNCR up to the last general election in 2001.
The man, who has been hospitalised since he was told that he and two others were charged with the January 5 murder of cattle farmer Shafeek Bacchus, told Stabroek News that he had once worked with the party gathering intelligence but had left. He was not prepared to go into what kind of intelligence gathering he did.
Contacted, both the leader of the party and its general secretary, Robert Corbin and Oscar Clarke respectively, could not say for sure if the man once worked with the party.
However, Clarke told Stabroek News he was aware that Thomas' co-accused, Shawn Hinds, was once a bodyguard assigned to the late Opposition Leader Desmond Hoyte. He said that Hinds was assigned to Hoyte who was entitled to security because he was a past president.
Corbin added that it was not important what Thomas did in the past but what he did in the present. He said what is important is the serious allegation being made about the man being associated with a death squad.
Thomas, who had managed the Auby's Wine Bar, is charged along with Hinds and co-owner of the A&D Funeral Home, Ashton King. They were implicated in Bacchus' murder after his brother George Bacchus claimed he saw them in the car from which the bullets emanated.