Rhon­dor Dowlat

Just over 100 pris­on­ers were re­lo­cat­ed from the Gold­en Grove Re­mand Yard and at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) in Arou­ca in an ex­er­cise that start­ed at about 9 am on Sat­ur­day and last­ed for about six hours, end­ing at 3 pm. It is be­lieved that more pris­on­ers are ex­pect­ed to be moved to­day.

A pris­ons of­fi­cer, who didn't want to be iden­ti­fied, ex­pressed con­cern that the ma­jor­i­ty of pris­on­ers re­lo­cat­ed were from the North Wing or The Deep and oth­ers from the South Wing at Re­mand Yard. Many are re­port­ed to be Mus­lims and mem­bers of the Ras­ta City Gang.The prison of­fi­cer said he and oth­er of­fi­cers are con­cerned about the move be­cause some of the re­lo­cat­ed pris­on­ers have ri­vals at MSP. Re­ports are that have been placed at the N-Di­vi­sion at MSP which can ac­com­mo­date up to 300 in­mates.

"We are con­cerned if there should be any clash­es with these pris­on­ers, which will bad­ly af­fect us while we are on du­ty. Our lives are al­ready threat­ened and this may even make it worse on us," the of­fi­cer said.A spe­cial unit of prison of­fi­cers, who all wore masks, con­duct­ed the re­lo­ca­tion ex­er­cise which was video­taped in its en­tire­ty.

"This was done to make sure that every­thing went well and there were no un­to­ward in­ci­dents–no pris­on­ers were beat­en and no of­fi­cers at­tacked," the of­fi­cer ex­plained.Con­tra­band items were seized dur­ing the ex­er­cise, in­clud­ing sev­er­al im­pro­vised weapons, cell­phones, an undis­closed amount of drugs and car­tons of cig­a­rettes. Search­es were car­ried out at the Port-of-Spain Prison and at MSP on Sat­ur­day.

On June 16 and 17, dur­ing two con­sec­u­tive raids, sev­er­al in­mates were bad­ly beat­en and about five pris­ons of­fi­cers at­tacked.Sources told the T&T Guardian the at­tack on pris­ons of­fi­cers and the re­lo­ca­tion stemmed from the pris­on­ers' dis­ap­proval of a cer­tain Mus­lim leader who was in­vit­ed in­to the prison in ear­ly June to give a lec­ture. Mus­lims in­mates ob­ject­ed to the lec­tures claim­ing the cler­ic did not givee true teach­ings of Is­lam and had pro­ject­ed racism.

Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Ster­ling Stew­art did not re­spond to calls for com­ment yes­ter­day and pres­i­dent of the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion Ceron Richards did not re­spond to calls to his cell phone.