Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment is not at lib­er­ty to pub­lish names of those de­tained un­der the state of emer­gency (SOE) op­er­a­tions un­til they are ar­rest­ed and charged, ac­cord­ing to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan.

Speak­ing at the dai­ly state of emer­gency me­dia brief­ing Ram­lo­gan was com­ment­ing on a call by Fr Clyde Har­vey for Gov­ern­ment to pub­lish the names of the de­tainees. He said Gov­ern­ment was not en­ti­tled to pub­lish de­tainees' names un­til they were ar­rest­ed and charged and could risk defama­tion suits if this was pub­lished ahead of prop­er process. Say­ing he had raised the is­sue, Ram­lo­gan said sev­er­al de­tainees had al­so said they didn't want their names pub­lished this since their fam­i­lies didn't know they were in gangs.

Ram­lo­gan said Gov­ern­ment there­fore al­so risked reprisals from such per­sons who didn't want their names pub­lished. On an­oth­er is­sue, Ram­lo­gan said the Pres­i­dent had signed the or­der re­gard­ing seizure of scrap iron. This ex­er­cise be­gan on Sun­day. Ram­lo­gan said there had been a prob­lem with scrap iron yards and for the pur­pos­es of deal­ing with any sit­u­a­tion aris­ing dur­ing a pub­lic emer­gency, he said, au­thor­i­ties could seize any scrap met­als in T&T. Own­ers will be com­pen­sat­ed and courts can al­so han­dle com­pen­sa­tion en­ti­tle­ment claims, Ram­lo­gan added. He said "This is to deal with the pe­cu­liar prob­lem in­volved which has im­pli­ca­tions for the op­er­a­tions we're on. It is dri­ven by in­tel­li­gence re­ceived by the (law en­force­ment) agen­cies,"

Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials say in­for­ma­tion had been re­ceived that scrap iron was be­ing used to man­u­fac­ture home made guns and that guns were some­times hid­den in scrap iron piles to avoid de­tec­tion by met­al de­tec­tors. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy said while In­de­pen­dence pa­rades will be on as usu­al to­mor­row for T&T's 49th an­niver­sary, the state of emer­gency will not be re­laxed. On whether po­lice had tak­en ac­tion against the 14 year old who had is­sued a Face­book death threat against the Prime Min­is­ter, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs said the po­lice are "still look­ing at it." On whether fur­ther death threats have been re­ceived re­gard­ing the PM or any oth­er Gov­ern­ment mem­bers, Gibbs said he couldn't com­ment for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons. (GA)