To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?The re­count­ing of the in­ves­tiga­tive process in­volved in the kid­nap­ping and sub­se­quent mur­der of Bal­ram "Ba­lo" Ma­haraj has tak­en some cu­ri­ous turns over the weeks that this news­pa­per has run the un­fold­ing sto­ry. Some things have be­come clear in the de­tailed Fran­cis Joseph nar­ra­tive, how­ev­er, and they are trou­bling. There have been huge dif­fer­ences in the lev­el of de­tail brought to bear on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion lo­cal­ly, and by the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions (FBI) team as­signed to the case. The FBI has been du­ly def­er­en­tial to lo­cal au­thor­i­ties in the mur­der case, but there is an un­der­cur­rent of frus­tra­tion in their re­count­ing in US courts of the progress of the case in T&T. As the case un­fold­ed in Wash­ing­ton Fed­er­al Court led by Judge John Bates, the sto­ry un­fold­ed of a kid­nap­ping gone ter­ri­bly wrong, a vic­tim ail­ing with­out ac­cess to what was de­scribed as a "bag of med­i­cine" dy­ing and end­ing up mu­ti­lat­ed and left to rot in plas­tic bar­rels buried in the San­ta Cruz for­est.

Sev­en Trinida­di­an men were ul­ti­mate­ly found guilty of the crime on Ju­ly 31 and await sen­tenc­ing on Feb­ru­ary 12, 2010. Each of the men faces the pos­si­bil­i­ty of life im­pris­on­ment with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of pa­role. Among those sev­en is Ri­car­do De Four, who has stead­fast­ly ar­gued that he was not in­volved in the tak­ing against his will of Bal­ram Ma­haraj, and who has claimed that he was on the job with the army's Spe­cial Forces unit when Ma­haraj was tak­en hostage. It is un­clear whether this ev­i­dence would have made any dif­fer­ence to the out­come of the case for De Four. The oth­er six par­tic­i­pants in the kid­nap­ping claim that he was present at sev­er­al crit­i­cal points in the plan­ning and ex­e­cu­tion of the plan to kid­nap Ma­haraj for ran­som. But that isn't the point in play here. What needs more crit­i­cal re­view is the re­sponse of the army to di­rect re­quests for in­for­ma­tion that was rel­e­vant to the case.

It took le­gal let­ters to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to pro­voke a re­sponse to re­quests to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on the where- abouts of De Four on April 6, 2005. It took more than two weeks for the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry to re­spond to a di­rect re­quest placed un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act. The re­sponse from the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary was un­sat­is­fac­to­ry, to say the least. The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty was forced to ad­mit that the ar­rival and de­par­ture records for the T&T Reg­i­ment were be­ing kept in a 40-foot con­tain­er that, ap­par­ent­ly, had not been se­cured against the el­e­ments. The gate slips that pro­vide con­trol records for the ar­rival and de­par­ture of the reg­i­ment's per­son­nel were soaked with rain wa­ter and sub­se­quent­ly de­stroyed af­ter cler­i­cal of­fi­cials de­ter­mined that the records were "dam­aged be­yond use." The records were in­cin­er­at­ed four months lat­er. Equal­ly un­sat­is­fac­to­ry is the reg­i­ment's re­sponse re­gard­ing the log­book for April 6, 2005, which places De Four at a course on the base at least un­til mid­day.

To date, the of­fi­cials of the reg­i­ment have not of­fered any fur­ther as­sis­tance in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­yond that which was specif­i­cal­ly re­quest­ed. There is no word on whether peo­ple who at­tend­ed the course re­mem­bered see­ing De Four there or in­ter­act­ing with him, nor has any in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion ap­par­ent­ly been launched by the lead­er­ship of the de­fence force in the face of ac­cu­sa­tions which im­pli­cate a for­mer sol­dier. Such an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion might so­lid­i­fy the case against De Four, or it might give him an op­por­tu­ni­ty to seek re­tri­al, but it would clear­ly iden­ti­fy the reg­i­ment and by ex­ten­sion the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty as in­sti­tu­tions will­ing to ex­tend them­selves to pro­vide all the rea­son­able in­for­ma­tion that a court of law might need in the pros­e­cu­tion of jus­tice. It is a nig­gling point that re­mains an ir­ri­tat­ing lapse in the case against the men ac­cused of mur­der­ing Bal­ram Ma­haraj.