Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

Sev­er­al Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) of­fi­cers who were fired be­tween April and May have been called to be re-in­ter­viewed at the agency.

The for­mer of­fi­cers, who were dis­missed fol­low­ing the shake-up at the agency in March, have been seek­ing le­gal coun­sel over their ter­mi­na­tion and are gear­ing up to sue the State. While le­gal ac­tion has yet to be filed, Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that sev­er­al of the agents were asked to come back this week. 

Guardian Me­dia could not con­firm whether it was to be re-in­ter­viewed to be re-em­ployed, re-in­ter­viewed be­cause of on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, or to ne­go­ti­ate their ex­it pack­ages in lieu of le­gal chal­lenges.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had said that “28 em­ploy­ees of the SSA were ter­mi­nat­ed, ei­ther for vi­o­la­tions of the SSA Act and Reg­u­la­tions, or for anom­alous re­cruit­ment or faulty pro­mo­tion process­es and prac­tices.”

Among those em­ploy­ees are for­mer di­rec­tor Roger Best, Pas­tor Ian Brown, the self-de­clared spy for the SSA, and his son, who was al­so em­ployed at the agency, and for­mer deputy di­rec­tor of ad­min­is­tra­tion Joanne Daniel. 

How­ev­er, none of the em­ploy­ees re­called are af­fil­i­at­ed with the Jerusalem Bride Church. Both Brown and Best are el­ders of Brown’s church, the Jerusalem Bride Church.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed new SSA Di­rec­tor An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer last Fri­day night, he said it would not be “pru­dent” to speak to the me­dia at this time.

On Ju­ly 3, in Par­lia­ment, Dr Row­ley read in­to Hansard a state­ment on the con­clu­sion of an au­dit con­duct­ed on the SSA by Phillips-Spencer. The au­dit re­vealed that the agency, un­der Best, amassed mil­i­tary-grade weapons and am­mu­ni­tion and op­er­at­ed a high­ly trained and mil­i­tarised so-called “Tac­ti­cal Re­sponse Unit.”

There were dis­turb­ing prac­tices of nepo­tism and op­por­tunism lead­ing to a con­cen­tra­tion of mem­bers of one church be­ing hired by the SSA, in­stances of dis­hon­esty, and deep de­cep­tion, and the SSA was in­creas­ing­ly in­ca­pable of se­cur­ing pub­lic trust.

“Such per­sons be­longed to a cult which was arm­ing it­self while preach­ing a doc­trine for trained mil­i­tary and para­mil­i­tary per­son­nel with a re­li­gious call­ing to be the most suit­able per­sons to re­place the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship. They were ex­ert­ing high lev­els of in­flu­ence on the af­fairs of the agency to the detri­ment of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty,” Dr Row­ley said.

Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that the em­ploy­ees felt ag­griev­ed that their pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tions had been af­fect­ed by Dr Row­ley’s state­ment, which would af­fect their fu­ture em­ploy­ment. 

So far, the State has on­ly been able to lay one set of charges against for­mer SSA em­ploy­ees—Brown, Sgt Sher­win Wal­dron and Su­san Portell-Grif­fith—for the “trans­fer­ring” of four “pro­hib­it­ed firearms” from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to the SSA.

While Best was de­tained and ques­tioned, he was sub­se­quent­ly re­leased as there was no ev­i­dence to charge him with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.

De­nials

Best, who has been silent since he was sus­pend­ed from the agency on March 2 and sub­se­quent­ly fired on May 18, in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia said that “the men­tion of me lead­ing a coup or any form of desta­bil­i­sa­tion is not on­ly pre­pos­ter­ous but lu­di­crous.”

For his part, Pas­tor Ian Al­bert Ezekiel Brown told the Guardian Me­dia that his church was not a cult. 

“It is the ab­solute fact that we were nev­er a cult, we are not a cult, and we re­sent the fact that we are be­ing so called ...” Brown said. 

How­ev­er, Dr Row­ley con­firmed that sev­er­al po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions were tak­ing place with re­gard to the SSA. 

One of those in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­volves mur­ders linked to the agency through the tac­ti­cal unit es­tab­lished by Best.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Dau­rius Figueira had ac­cused Dr Row­ley of act­ing pre­ma­ture­ly in re­veal­ing some of the find­ings of the on­go­ing au­dit in­to the op­er­a­tions of the SSA, es­pe­cial­ly un­der the cloak of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege.

Grif­fith re­sponds

Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) yes­ter­day said he was “re­li­ably in­formed that near­ly half of the in­di­vid­u­als who were ter­mi­nat­ed from the SSA have been re­called to re­turn to du­ty at the same SSA.”

In a state­ment, he added, “If this is in­deed true, then this high­lights the ex­tent of the Gov­ern­ment’s hypocrisy, dou­ble stan­dards, bias, vic­tim­i­sa­tion, and in­com­pe­tence for all of the pub­lic to see.

“Adding to this un­just sit­u­a­tion, it has been re­vealed that the dis­missed in­di­vid­u­als have been told they sim­ply need to reap­ply to go through the same process they did to be hired ini­tial­ly. This was the same process that they un­der­went when they were first hired, de­spite Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley’s mis­lead­ing state­ments to the coun­try claim­ing they were not qual­i­fied.”

Grif­fith said, “These in­di­vid­u­als were ful­ly qual­i­fied and had passed the poly­graph test at the time of their ini­tial hir­ing. By ask­ing them to re­turn and go through the same hir­ing process again, it fur­ther demon­strates the un­just na­ture of their ini­tial dis­missals, show­ing that the Gov­ern­ment’s ac­cu­sa­tions were base­less and un­found­ed, which mir­rors the un­found­ed al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion re­lat­ed to firearm li­cens­es, which have yet to be sub­stan­ti­at­ed.”

The Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion “to re­hire these in­di­vid­u­als,” he said, “ap­pears to be a des­per­ate at­tempt to mit­i­gate the im­pend­ing le­gal reper­cus­sions for their un­just ac­tions.”