Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley has called for the re­moval of Sasha Mo­hammed from the post of spe­cial ad­vis­er to the Prime Min­is­ter.The call was made to the me­dia by Row­ley fol­low­ing the PNM's gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day in the pres­ence of the par­ty's gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Forde and Camille Robin­son-Reg­is.

Row­ley said peo­ple like Julie Brown, SIA deputy di­rec­tor and Mo­hammed who are on the pub­lic's pay­roll need to be re­moved be­cause "we will con­tin­ue to feel threat­ened by their pres­ence since they have mech­a­nisms of the State to dam­age me­dia work­ers and oth­er cit­i­zens to make the Gov­ern­ment look good."Mo­hammed had to be warned by the po­lice af­ter their probe un­cov­ered that threat­en­ing e-mails sent to Ex­press Ed­i­tor-in-Chief Omatie Ly­der and re­porter An­na Ram­dass orig­i­nat­ed from the com­put­er at her home.Based on what has hap­pened to Ly­der and Ram­dass, Row­ley called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to act.Row­ley al­so asked if the PM was pre­pared to pro­vide pro­tec­tion to the in­di­vid­u­als in the pub­lic ser­vice. Row­ley said he be­lieved that "of­fi­cers of the State are be­ing paid to do dan­ger­ous and dirty po­lit­i­cal work and pro­tect them­selves in the in­ter­im."

Row­ley in­sist­ed that Mo­hammed was us­ing the State to car­ry out po­lit­i­cal agen­das in the Gov­ern­ment's cam­paign. Row­ley said he can­not see any Prime Min­is­ter, who wants to treat with this coun­try in a prop­er way, can have an ad­vis­er who was ques­tioned by po­lice.Stat­ing that Mo­hammed had to "frog­march to the po­lice sta­tion to face ques­tions of crim­i­nal con­duct", Row­ley said he was ad­vised by the news­pa­pers that peo­ple who hold sig­nif­i­cant of­fice, ad­vis­ing the PM on par­tic­u­lar mat­ters of great sen­si­tiv­i­ty have been shown "to ter­ror­is­ing the free me­dia and peo­ple." -re­port­ing by SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI