Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

A cloud now hangs over the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the 1990 coup at­tempt, whose lat­est hear­ings are set to be­gin this morn­ing.

Among the com­mis­sion­ers ex­pect­ed to sit at the 14th ses­sion of the en­quiry at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, is Dr Hafi­zo­ol Mo­hammed.

Last week he ad­mit­ted to the Sun­day Guardian he ob­tained his doc­tor­ate of sci­ence (DSc) in in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions from At­lantic In­ter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty (AIU), which is de­scribed by var­i­ous Web sites as a diplo­ma mill.

He said he knew it was not ac­cred­it­ed by US ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions.

The com­mis­sion­ers were ex­pect­ed to met at the Hilton Trinidad yes­ter­day evening to dis­cuss the mat­ter.

Now fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the T&T Guardian have un­earthed more dis­crep­an­cies in his cur­ricu­lum vi­tae (CV). Mo­hammed claims to have a de­gree from a pres­ti­gious mil­i­tary uni­ver­si­ty in the US, which has nev­er heard of him.

Among the ref­er­ees he lists on his CV are a dead pres­i­dent of T&T and a non-ex­is­tent pres­i­dent of Turkey.

When the T&T Guardian con­tact­ed Mo­hammed for com­ment yes­ter­day, he hung up the phone.

Mo­hammed, orig­i­nal­ly from Dow Vil­lage, Cal­i­for­nia, now lives in the US and has US cit­i­zen­ship. He is stay­ing at the Hilton Trinidad.

Who ex­act­ly is Mo­hammed? No one seems to know. Yet a se­nior mem­ber of Cab­i­net in­sist­ed he should be se­lect­ed as a mem­ber of the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the 1990 coup at­tempt, which be­gan sit­ting two years ago.

T&T's first Pres­i­dent Sir El­lis Clarke is among the names giv­en as ad­di­tion­al ref­er­ences on Mo­hammed's CV, even though Sir El­lis died in De­cem­ber 2010 and is list­ed as de­ceased.

Clarke's son, Pe­ter, a di­rec­tor of Guardian Me­dia Ltd, yes­ter­day ex­pressed sur­prise over his fa­ther's in­clu­sion, say­ing: "It is shock­ing some­one would use a de­ceased per­son as ref­er­ence."

Mo­hammed's ref­er­ees

As for Ah­met Haluk Ozbud­dun, whom Mo­hammed al­so list­ed as de­ceased and named as the pres­i­dent of Turkey on his CV, Ozbud­dun nev­er ex­ist­ed. Since 1923, fol­low­ing the Turk­ish War of In­de­pen­dence, there have been on­ly 11 heads of state, and the name Ozbud­dun is not among them.

Nor was any­one by that name ever the as­sis­tant sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Na­tions, as Mo­hammed claimed. His CV al­so lists as ref­er­ees the chair­man of the en­quiry, Sir David Sim­mons, the for­mer Chief Jus­tice of Bar­ba­dos, and its vice chair­man, fel­low Bar­ba­di­an at­tor­ney Richard Chel­tenham, QC.

Sim­mons, when con­tact­ed at the Hilton Trinidad yes­ter­day, re­fused to com­ment on the lat­est de­vel­op­ments. "You ex­pect me to make a com­ment? I have no com­ment to make. Good morn­ing and good­bye," he said curt­ly. Chel­tenham was ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in T&T from Bar­ba­dos yes­ter­day evening.

Sev­er­al gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and of­fi­cials al­so are list­ed on Mo­hammed's CV. While mix­ing up the port­fo­lios of the min­is­ters, Mo­hammed list­ed as ref­er­ences Min­is­ter of Trans­port Chan­dresh Shar­ma, Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Win­ston Dook­er­an and Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Nizam Baksh.

In re­sponse to a text mes­sage, Shar­ma said: "I was not aware. In writ­ing from me? Guess any­one can put any name as a ref­er­ence." Baksh, how­ev­er, told the T&T Guardian while he had met Mo­hammed on two oc­ca­sions he was un­aware he was used as a ref­er­ence.

Dook­er­an, T&T Guardian learned, is present­ly out of the coun­try. T&T's Am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed States Dr Neil Parsan, who is al­so Shar­ma's nephew, is al­so list­ed along with for­mer Chief of De­fence Staff Brig Roland Maun­dy. Parsan could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day. Maun­dy told the T&T Guardian he had not been told he was list­ed as a ref­er­ee on Mo­hammed's CV.

"I met him once in the US but I would think if you are list­ing some­one as a ref­er­ence you will call. I am glad I got this tele­phone call," Maun­dy said. Not known here The Amer­i­can Mil­i­tary Uni­ver­si­ty, where Mo­hammed claimed in 2011 to have earned a mas­ter's de­gree in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty stud­ies as a dis­tin­guished grad­u­ate, has no record of him.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day to con­firm whether Mo­hammed grad­u­at­ed from the uni­ver­si­ty in 2011, as­so­ciate reg­is­trar Yvette Porter said: "We do not have any such stu­dent with that name in our data­base." Porter said the oth­er rea­sons a stu­dent's name might not be list­ed in the data­base were changes due to mar­riage or di­vorce or mis­spelling on le­gal doc­u­ments.

She added: "We do this all the time. I do about ten search­es for the day. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, stu­dents say they at­tend­ed the school and they have not. "Based on the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed, that name, that spelling – that stu­dent did not come here."

Asked how it was pos­si­ble that Mo­hammed's name was not list­ed as a grad­u­ate, Porter said: "The on­ly rea­son it would not be in our data­base is if he was not a stu­dent here or he pro­vid­ed a dif­fer­ent name."

In­sist­ing the data­base gives a thor­ough record of all past and present stu­dents en­rolled at the uni­ver­si­ty, Porter added: "I do not know how to say it any dif­fer­ent­ly. No one with that name has ever been a stu­dent at this school. No one with the spelling of that name has been a stu­dent of this school, ever."

Most scan­dalous ever

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­scribed the lat­est de­vel­op­ment as a "trav­es­ty." He added: "The ap­point­ment is in the same vein as for­mer di­rec­tor of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine. "This Gov­ern­ment is con­sis­tent­ly ap­point­ing peo­ple un­qual­i­fied and un­suit­able for po­si­tions, against the pub­lic in­ter­est.

"Who se­lect­ed this man and what is the con­nec­tion to the Gov­ern­ment?" Row­ley asked. For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj said a dead man could not be list­ed as a ref­er­ence. "This ap­point­ment is go­ing down as the most scan­dalous ever in the his­to­ry of T&T.

In fact, it should go down in the Guin­ness Book of Records be­cause it would be the first time a dead man could rec­om­mend some­one. Maybe the Cab­i­net has a spe­cial con­nec­tion in hell or heav­en," Ma­haraj said.

Se­nior Coun­sel Regi­nald Ar­mour said the Sun­day Guardian's re­port on the ap­point­ment of Mo­hammed gave rise for con­cern. "I will be con­cerned fur­ther if the most re­cent in­for­ma­tion giv­en, in con­nec­tion with the in­for­ma­tion from the Amer­i­can Mil­i­tary Uni­ver­si­ty, sug­gests that his se­cu­ri­ty cre­den­tials are now in ques­tion, giv­en that I un­der­stand that to be an im­por­tant con­sid­er­a­tion in his se­lec­tion to be a tri­bunal mem­ber," Ar­mour said.