Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day no plot was es­tab­lished to as­sas­si­nate Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and three mem­bers of her Cab­i­net. He said so at a news brief­ing at the Op­po­si­tion cau­cus room at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Wright­son Road, Port-of- Spain. He said the "so-called plot" was used to jus­ti­fy the state of emer­gency. "The Prime Min­is­ter has, in a very reck­less man­ner, mis­led this coun­try on No­vem­ber 24," Row­ley stressed. He quot­ed a doc­u­ment, called "The eval­u­a­tion of the plot by the coun­try's se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices". It was dat­ed No­vem­ber 23.

It read:

(1). The gen­er­al as­sess­ment of this in­for­ma­tion (al­leged plot) is that it seems to be an amal­ga­ma­tion of sev­er­al pieces of in­for­ma­tion, us­ing his­toric in­for­ma­tion on in­di­vid­u­als of known ill-re­pute to val­i­date the claim of a fu­ture act and em­bell­ished by the au­thor's lib­er­al use of opin­ions rather than facts;

(2). the chrono­log­i­cal se­quence of events is in­con­sis­tent;

(3). it is quite pos­si­ble that he (the source who leaked the plot) is spec­u­lat­ing as to what he is see­ing in an at­tempt to make sense of it;

(4). due to a lack of un­der­stand­ing by the source, there seems to be an at­tempt to use the term (cer­tain term used which sug­gests that these per­sons are ex­trem­ists); and

(5). there is no in­for­ma­tion iden­ti­fy­ing the lead­ers of the two groups (sup­posed to be the ex­trem­ists groups), or whether the per­sons in­volved are known to each oth­er. At­tempts to iden­ti­fy a com­mon link, pos­si­ble through the Imams of the com­mu­ni­ty to which they be­longed, proved fu­tile.

Row­ley then said: "The in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing this so-called plot has been dis­cred­it­ed by the (po­lice) an­a­lyst in the eval­u­a­tion, as of No­vem­ber 23." He said de­spite that in­for­ma­tion Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who is the chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, "cre­ates the hys­te­ria that we have been through, mo­bilise the forces, makes po­lit­i­cal state­ments, tell the coun­try we can't tell you any­thing be­cause it is se­cret." He said: "So now we know for a fact no plot was de­ter­mined on No­vem­ber 24."

He said the Op­po­si­tion had con­cerns that those de­tained were held "un­der crim­i­nal con­duct as to the plot to com­mit mur­der but they are held un­der ex­ist­ing pow­ers of the state of emer­gency." He said that when the emer­gency pow­ers ex­pire on Mon­day when the state of emer­gency ex­pires "those per­sons (de­tained) will have to walk." He said how­ev­er those peo­ple were "now in se­ri­ous jeop­ardy" be­cause the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate need­ed ev­i­dence to keep them in­car­cer­at­ed or charged to keep it from se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct in pub­lic of­fice.