Ak­ile Si­mon

At­tor­ney Garvin Nicholas has called on Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to say more on the al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate him by an un­named or­gan­i­sa­tion. Nicholas was speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view at his Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, of­fice yes­ter­day.

He said his client Clin­ton Au­guste was very dis­turbed and fear­ful for his life af­ter Man­ning's state­ments on Mon­day night in Ari­ma. "We would have to scru­ti­nise ex­act­ly what has been said to see if it forms a case for li­bel and an at­tempt to tar­nish his char­ac­ter," Nicholas said. "Be­cause it ap­peared he (Man­ning) was link­ing my client to an as­sas­si­na­tion ring, when all he sought to do as a po­lice of­fi­cer was his job." Au­guste was dis­missed from the Po­lice Ser­vice ear­li­er this year af­ter he was found guilty of dis­or­der­ly con­duct by a tri­bunal.

The in­ci­dent stemmed from a con­fronta­tion with Man­ning, mem­bers of his se­cu­ri­ty de­tail and Au­guste out­side the La Fan­tasie, St Ann's, res­i­dence on Ju­ly 26, 2008. Au­guste has since ap­pealed the tri­bunal's de­ci­sion. Nicholas said there were many ques­tions need­ed to be an­swered. He said: "We would like to know if he in­ves­ti­gat­ed this group...Has he in­formed any­body be­fore to­day (yes­ter­day) about those threats? Is it re­port­ed any­way? "We cer­tain­ly would like to know more about this group and what in­for­ma­tion Man­ning has, not in the 'Mr Big' kind of way ei­ther. "Sure­ly, those kinds of things can­not be al­lowed to just come in the pub­lic do­main and be used as a smoke screen," Nicholas said.

Nicholas said the "ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion" against Man­ning would be tak­en in due course: Speak­ing in Ari­ma on Mon­day night, Man­ning said his wife Hazel re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from an in­di­vid­ual that there was a plot by a cer­tain or­gan­i­sa­tion to kill him. Man­ning added there could have been blood­shed in T&T on the eve of last year's an­niver­sary of the at­tempt­ed coup when a marked po­lice ve­hi­cle at­tempt­ed to peel-off the fi­nal jeep in their de­tail, while pro­ceed­ing around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah dur­ing the ear­ly hours of Ju­ly 26. Ac­cord­ing to Man­ning, the in­ci­dent oc­curred two days af­ter his wife was told of the plot.

Nicholas, how­ev­er, ques­tioned when Man­ning first learnt of the al­leged plot, why did he not con­tact law en­force­ment agen­cies. He de­scribed Man­ning's state­ments as a di­ver­sion. "This is sim­ply an at­tempt to di­vert the pop­u­la­tion from the call for an in­quiry in­to the coup and if it is the Prime Min­is­ter would go at these lengths to di­vert the at­ten­tion from that call, we have to won­der what is his re­al mo­tive," Nicholas said. Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert said he had as­signed some­one to in­ves­ti­gate Man­ning's state­ments and any threat against a pub­lic per­son would not be tak­en light­ly.