A high-speed maritime incident involving Guyana’s top opposition figure has ignited public debate, after law enforcement intercepted a vessel carrying Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed late Tuesday amid conflicting narratives about what transpired. The confrontation unfolded just before 10 p.m. during a routine joint coastal patrol conducted by the Guyana Police Force (GPF) and the country’s Coast Guard. According to official police statements, patrol units spotted Mohamed’s unregistered “go-fast” craft entering the mouth of the Demerara River at an excessive speed. Law enforcement activated sirens to signal the vessel to halt, but the craft failed to respond, triggering a high-speed chase upriver that ended at a public wharf in Friendship, a small community located on the East Bank of the Demerara.
Upon intercepting the vessel at the dock, police confirmed that three people, including Opposition Leader Mohamed, were still aboard the craft. Five additional people who had been traveling with the group were already on the wharf when officers arrived. During the chase, responding officers reported witnessing an unidentified person throw an unknown bag overboard into the murky waters of the Demerara River. To date, investigators have not been able to confirm the contents of the discarded bag, and joint teams from the GPF and Guyana Defence Force Coast Guard are currently conducting search operations to recover the item as part of an ongoing formal investigation into the incident.
However, the opposition has pushed back aggressively against the official police narrative, offering a sharply different account of the stop. Odessa Primus, General Secretary of the Working People’s Alliance (WIN) and a member of the traveling party who was on the vessel during the incident, disputed key details of police’s version of events. Primus explained that officers initially approached the group only to request boat documentation from Mohamed, who informed responding units that the craft was already docked and he did not have the paperwork on his person at the time. She added that officers subsequently launched a full search of the vessel and all passengers on suspicion of trafficking illegal narcotics, but no contraband or unlawful items were uncovered during the search.
Opposition representatives further confirmed that one opposition legislator, Natasha Singh, was taken into police custody after a bag holding a legally licensed firearm owned by another sitting legislator, Dawn Hastings, was discovered during the search. Hastings had already disembarked the vessel before the interception and accidentally left the bag aboard, the opposition said.
Context around the incident adds political weight to the confrontation: Mohamed and his delegation were en route back to the capital city of Georgetown from Guyana’s Region One, where the group had traveled to meet with survivors and family members of victims of the devastating July 18 MV Barima ferry disaster. That maritime accident, one of the worst in Guyana’s recent history, claimed the lives of more than 100 people when the passenger ferry sank off the country’s northwest coast.