Gail Alexan­der

Peo­ple are be­ing ap­proached to make re­ports of abuse by po­lice and army of­fi­cers to dis­tract the com­mu­ni­ty from cur­rent se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said yes­ter­day. Ram­lo­gan spoke at a me­dia con­fer­ence where De­fence Force head Ken­rick Ma­haraj com­ment­ed on re­ports of an al­leged beat­ing of a per­son by sol­diers at For­res Park, dur­ing op­er­a­tions in that area. Ma­haraj said he had no in­for­ma­tion on the al­le­ga­tion. He said an op­er­a­tion was done on For­res Park on a tar­get which had been un­der sur­veil­lance for two months.

Ram­lo­gan said gangs had pen­e­trat­ed com­mu­ni­ties to such depths that when a gang leader was ar­rest­ed, the com­mu­ni­ty rose up in arms. "There are peo­ple go­ing about ask­ing peo­ple to take a lash and a weal on their back be­cause TV cam­eras com­ing and you have to say the po­lice do it," he said. Ma­haraj said if any al­le­ga­tion was sub­stan­ti­at­ed it would be dealt with ac­cord­ing to the mil­i­tary code of jus­tice.