Gail Alexan­der

Turn your­self in to the po­lice! That's the ad­vice At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan has giv­en to the 14-year-old girl who post­ed a Face­book video death threat aimed at Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. The teen, who post­ed the video on Thurs­day, apol­o­gised yes­ter­day af­ter Ram­lo­gan said the is­sue was be­ing sent to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er for ac­tion. The sit­u­a­tion has prompt­ed the Gov­ern­ment to start prepar­ing laws to pre­vent abuse of the In­ter­net to spread hate and vi­o­lence. The girl's video con­tained com­ments in­di­cat­ing that a sniper would shoot the PM and there would be no ev­i­dence.

At yes­ter­day's dai­ly state of emer­gency me­dia brief­ing, Ram­lo­gan said the video al­so in­clud­ed racial state­ments. The AG had not­ed the girl's video in ob­serv­ing that peo­ple were post­ing items on the In­ter­net, in­cit­ing vi­o­lence. Say­ing he'd re­ceived an apol­o­gy yes­ter­day from the girl on his Face­book page, Ram­lo­gan said: "As sor­ry as I might be for her ac­tion, and as dis­gust­ed and dis­ap­point­ed as some may feel by it, what you must do now is turn your­self in to the po­lice and let them deal with it as it's a most se­ri­ous mat­ter. "This is a very grave mis­take," he said. "I ask you and the best thing you can do is turn your­self in to the po­lice and let the law take its course...and pray.

"God will al­ways have mer­cy and there'll al­ways be an­oth­er door to open in life." On whether the Prime Min­is­ter would press charges against the girl, Ram­lo­gan said the mat­ter would be de­ter­mined by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. Ram­lo­gan said the Gov­ern­ment had re­ceived mes­sages from its em­bassies on the is­sue as it had gone in­ter­na­tion­al, since Face­book was not con­fined to T&T. "How we deal with these ques­tions is not a mat­ter that can be triv­i­alised," he said. He not­ed that teenagers were ar­rest­ed in the UK by Scot­land Yard for in­cit­ing and in­flam­ma­to­ry In­ter­net state­ments to en­cour­age vi­o­lence.

He said two men in their 20s in Eng­land were al­so sen­tenced to four years' jail for us­ing Face­book to in­cite ri­ot­ing and vi­o­lence. Not­ing that UK Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron said the use of so­cial me­dia for vi­o­lence must be stopped, Ram­lo­gan said the UK had en­act­ed leg­is­la­tion on the mat­ter. Ram­lo­gan said he had asked the Chief Par­lia­men­tary Coun­sel and the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion to draft laws for Par­lia­ment for reg­u­la­tions to mon­i­tor so­cial net­work­ing sites.

This will en­sure they are not be­ing abused and mis­used by peo­ple with agen­das and sin­is­ter mo­tives to in­vite peo­ple to form gangs via the In­ter­net. "Use of the In­ter­net to spread ha­tred and in­cite vi­o­lence and sedi­tious mat­ters is some­thing we must now mon­i­tor as T&T is part of the glob­al vil­lage and we must live up to date with the times," the AG said. "The in­ten­tion is not to cur­tail free­dom of ex­pres­sion, it's to fo­cus on per­sons who mis­use the tech­nol­o­gy for il­le­gal acts and en­cour­ag­ing con­spir­a­cies and In­ter­net gangs."