Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The ma­jor events that rocked Trinidad and To­ba­go in the third month of this year could make for an award-win­ning TV se­ries.

From the chill­ing dis­cov­ery of Han­nah Mathu­ra’s grave on her fam­i­ly’s Val­sayn prop­er­ty to a rouge el­e­ment in an elite state spy agency al­leged­ly linked to the mur­ders of three cit­i­zens, to the Harpe Place mass mur­ders which claimed five lives, in­clud­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer. There was al­so tur­bu­lence on the po­lit­i­cal front, with Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar fac­ing scathing crit­i­cism from some of her MPs; and the pass­ing of the con­tentious Prop­er­ty Tax (Amend­ment) Bill.

But March was not on­ly bac­cha­nal and gloomy news. The month al­so saw T&T shin­ing bright­ly on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage when Ms World Trinidad and To­ba­go se­cured fourth place in the pageant.

Delv­ing deep­er in­to the ma­jor events, the first to hit the na­tion­al spot­light was on March 3, when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley shock­ing­ly re­vealed via his Face­book page that Ma­jor Roger Best, the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) di­rec­tor, had been sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave the pre­vi­ous day (March 2).

He stat­ed, “The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) has rec­om­mend­ed to the Cab­i­net that the head of the SSA be re­placed im­me­di­ate­ly and that new lead­er­ship and man­age­ment be in­stalled with dis­patch.”

Re­tired Brigadier Gen­er­al Phillips-Spencer was re­called as an am­bas­sador to Wash­ing­ton to act as the head of the SSA, and an au­dit of per­son­nel, equip­ment, and process­es at the or­gan­i­sa­tion was launched.

When re­porters fur­ther pressed Row­ley on this mat­ter on March 4, he said trou­bling in­for­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed to the NSC by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and war­rant­ed dras­tic in­ter­ven­tion.

In the days that fol­lowed, the Op­po­si­tion de­mand­ed an­swers from the Prime Min­is­ter on Best’s sud­den re­moval.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed the SSA was be­ing used by Gov­ern­ment to spy on its po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents, de­trac­tors, PNM mem­bers and fi­nanciers.

Her claims, how­ev­er, were rub­bished by the Prime Min­is­ter, who called on the pub­lic to ex­er­cise pa­tience as the au­dit con­tin­ued. Fol­low­ing a raid at his Ari­ma home on March 9, pas­tor Ian Brown, 67, claimed to be a spy and to be Is­raeli and Ger­man-trained. Sev­er­al of his church mem­bers be­came SSA mem­bers, in­clud­ing now-fired deputy di­rec­tor of in­tel­li­gence, Joanne Daniel, and Brown’s son. Brown’s church­es were al­so searched dur­ing the probe.

Re­ports re­vealed that in 2011, he was ap­point­ed by then-po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith as a Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cer on Best’s rec­om­men­da­tion and be­came his “prophet­ic ad­vi­sor.”

How­ev­er, his SRP sta­tus was sub­se­quent­ly re­voked by the TTPS. Re­ports sug­gest­ed that the SSA shake-up was linked to the mur­ders of Aleem Khan, Bryan Fe­lix and Andy Daniel.

Daniel, the then-SSA deputy di­rec­tor, in­stalled cam­era sys­tems at the homes of Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. He was shot dead on No­vem­ber 11, 2023, on the Uri­ah But­ler High­way near the Ca­roni Over­pass. Firearms from the SSA were seized and sent to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre for test­ing. It was re­port­ed that be­fore Daniel’s death, in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cials tried, with­out suc­cess, to alert the State of ques­tion­able op­er­a­tions at the SSA.

Mean­while, Khan and Fe­lix’s bod­ies were found in a forest­ed area in Cu­mu­to on Oc­to­ber 13, 2019. Dur­ing the probe, over a dozen SSA em­ploy­ees were fired.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so sought in­ter­na­tion­al as­sis­tance to de­ter­mine to what ex­tent the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agency had be­come com­pro­mised.

As the probe in­to the SSA con­tin­ued, the fo­cus was shift­ed slight­ly to a spy unit with­in the TTPS. Known as the Re­search and An­a­lyt­i­cal Unit (RAU), a Guardian Me­dia re­port stat­ed the unit re­ports on­ly to the Spe­cial Branch (SB) and falls un­der the re­mit of Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds. The re­port stat­ed that the unit pro­vid­ed the Gov­ern­ment with in­for­ma­tion on some of the is­sues that led to Best’s sus­pen­sion and the start of the in­ter­nal probe in­to its op­er­a­tions.

While this was un­fold­ing, the coun­try was again rocked by a shock­ing dis­cov­ery by po­lice on March 12. Skele­tal re­mains of 18-year-old Han­nah Mathu­ra were ex­ca­vat­ed from a shal­low grave in the back­yard of her fam­i­ly’s home at Bu­tu Road, South Val­sayn. She was al­leged­ly shot in the head and buried there sev­en years ago.

Neigh­bours gave ac­counts of strange oc­cur­rences at the house and of a shy and pe­tite Han­nah who was of­ten seen look­ing through a win­dow from the home. No pho­tographs of her have sur­faced since the sto­ry gripped na­tion­al at­ten­tion and there were no re­ports of her school life, but it is be­lieved she had an ill­ness. She was last seen in Ju­ly 2017.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors again searched the premis­es for skele­tal re­mains af­ter doubt arose on the iden­ti­ty of the first set of re­mains but noth­ing fur­ther was found, and the re­mains were lat­er con­firmed via DNA.

Han­nah’s par­ents An­drew, 65, and Alana, 63, were even­tu­al­ly ar­rest­ed and charged with her mur­der.

One of blood­i­est months for year

As these de­vel­op­ments gripped the coun­try, mur­ders con­tin­ued un­abat­ed.

March was one of the blood­i­est months this year with 55 mur­ders record­ed, sur­pass­ing the same month last year by 17 mur­ders.

Short­ly be­fore 11 am on March 16, rapid gun­shots from a dri­ve-by shoot­ing at Harpe Place in East Port-of-Spain claimed five lives—Rudolph Don­nie James, Randy Graves, 32, Sgt Lar­ry Phillip, 51, Pe­te No­ray, 51, and De­von Jack, 43. None of them was the tar­get, but po­lice be­lieve it was reprisal for the fa­tal shoot­ing of 11-year-old Ezekiel Paria in Feb­ru­ary.

Fol­low­ing the mass shoot­ing, res­i­dents erect­ed makeshift bar­ri­cades of traf­fic cones and bar­rels as they felt the po­lice were un­able to pro­tect them. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said po­lice pa­trols in the com­mu­ni­ty were in­creased and coun­selling was of­fered to res­i­dents.

Days ear­li­er, on March 11, gar­den­er Bud­dy George, 59, his sons Mar­cus Budy and Je­re­mi­ah George and their friend De­on Men­doza were killed by six gun­men, dressed in cloth­ing re­sem­bling po­lice tac­ti­cal wear, in their camp in Ma­yaro. Bud­dy George’s two daugh­ters and grand­child were al­so present but they were not in­jured. Po­lice and rel­a­tives claimed that Budy George had moved in­to the camp af­ter re­ceiv­ing threats from peo­ple who want­ed him to pay pro­tec­tion tax.

Amid pub­lic ob­jec­tions, the con­tro­ver­sial Prop­er­ty Tax (Amend­ment) Bill was passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on March 18 by a vote of 20 for, 15 against and no ab­sen­teeism.

The bill sought to ad­dress the con­cerns of the pub­lic by re­duc­ing the rate of tax­a­tion on the an­nu­al rental val­ue (ARV) of res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty from three per cent to two per cent, and ex­tend­ed the pe­ri­od of time by which cit­i­zens can chal­lenge the cal­cu­la­tions, from 30 days to six months.

On the po­lit­i­cal front, Per­sad-Bisses­sar faced heavy crit­i­cism and her lead­er­ship ca­pa­bil­i­ties were called in­to ques­tion by mem­bers of her par­ty amidst pub­lic dis­cord over the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) in­ter­nal elec­tions.

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray pub­licly de­mand­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar call the UNC ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions with­in the con­sti­tu­tion­al time­frame. His calls were sup­port­ed by Tabaquite MP Haynes-Al­leyne, Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles and Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la Dr Rai Rag­bir.

This was met with strong pub­lic sup­port for Per­sad-Bisses­sar by oth­er MPs who crit­i­cised their col­leagues. An un­fazed Per­sad-Bisses­sar ques­tioned whether Paray was be­ing used as a pup­pet by the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment to desta­bilise the UNC and main­tained that the elec­tions would be called when it was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due.

And, the month will for­ev­er be etched in­to the mem­o­ry of eight na­tion­als con­vict­ed of the mur­der of druglo­rd Dole Chadee’s broth­er, af­ter they gained their free­dom hav­ing spent al­most three decades be­hind bars.

High Court Judge Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son re-sen­tenced Michael “Rat” Ma­haraj, Samuel Ma­haraj, Damien Rami­ah, Bob­by Rami­ah, Seenath Rami­ah, Daniel Gopaul, Richard Hug­gins and Mark Jaik­er­an and freed them of the charge of mur­der­ing Thack­oor Boodram.

An­oth­er ac­cused, Leslie Hug­gins, was al­so re-sen­tenced but is serv­ing a sep­a­rate life sen­tence for the 1996 mur­der of his cousin, Clint Hug­gins. They were among ten men ac­cused of mur­der­ing Boodram, a pig farmer, in De­cem­ber 1997 and were con­vict­ed of the crime in 2002.

Dur­ing March there were al­so pas­sion­ate ap­peals to the au­thor­i­ties for as­sis­tance in find­ing five miss­ing Ce­dros fish­er­men. Cap­tain David Seep­aul, 60, his son Da­vanan, 35, Shi­va “Saucy Boy” Seep­er­sad, 20, Braiy­er Gon­za­lez Ali, 21, and Je­re­mi­ah “Co­co” Pasqual, 19, from Fuller­ton, left aboard a fish­ing ves­sel named Aman­da af­ter 4 pm on Feb­ru­ary 24 and were nev­er seen again.

De­spite sev­er­al search­es, nei­ther the men nor their boat were found. A body be­lieved to be one of the fish­er­men was found in Venezuela but to date, there has been no con­fir­ma­tion and rel­a­tives are still hop­ing for clo­sure.

One of the biggest pranks af­fect­ing thou­sands of chil­dren, teach­ing staff, school work­ers and par­ents, oc­curred in this month when si­mul­ta­ne­ous bomb threats were sent to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s of­fi­cial email, re­sult­ing in 49 schools in the South East­ern Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict be­ing evac­u­at­ed.

One of the most heart­warm­ing events for the month, how­ev­er, was the out­pour­ing of love shown to Miss World Trinidad and To­ba­go Aché Abra­hams on her re­turn home, af­ter she placed in the top four at the 71st Miss World Pageant at the Jio World Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Mum­bai, In­dia, on March 9.

She was greet­ed with ec­sta­t­ic cheers from a crowd gath­ered out­side the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on March 18, the sweet sounds of tas­sa drums, African drums, steel­pan, and per­for­mances from tra­di­tion­al In­di­an and African dancers.