Ak­ile Si­mon

In­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty was what caused As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Ray­mond Craig to go to the rooms oc­cu­pied by Sau­di Ara­bia diplo­mat Fawaz A Al Shubaili at the Hy­att Re­gency on Mon­day af­ter­noon.

This was dis­closed by Craig, dur­ing a news con­fer­ence called by the Po­lice Ser­vice at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

He apol­o­gised for the in­ci­dent and al­so de­nied that the po­lice were look­ing for guns and am­mu­ni­tion. The ACP re­fused to say what in­for­ma­tion the po­lice re­ceived re­lat­ing to Al Shubaili, cit­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons. He al­so de­nied that the diplo­mat or his rooms were searched by po­lice. The news con­fer­ence was called af­ter cer­tain sec­tions of the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty ex­pressed anger over the in­ci­dent. Craig al­so pub­licly apol­o­gised for what tran­spired. Al Shubaili was sent to this coun­try by his gov­ern­ment to as­sist some 207 lo­cal Mus­lims with ob­tain­ing visas, as op­posed to hav­ing T&T na­tion­als trav­el to Cara­cas, Venezuela, to have the process com­plet­ed at the Sau­di Ara­bi­an Em­bassy there. The Mus­lims are ex­pect­ed to trav­el to Sau­di Ara­bia to par­tic­i­pate in the Haj pil­grim­age. Craig, who took full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for what tran­spired at the two ho­tel rooms Al Shubaili oc­cu­pied, said po­lice act­ed on in­for­ma­tion they re­ceived.

"In­for­ma­tion came to hand...that in­for­ma­tion was as­sessed and in our view, we felt that that in­for­ma­tion could neg­a­tive­ly af­fect na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in T&T, and we act­ed on that in­for­ma­tion," he said. "As a re­sult of that, doc­u­ments (war­rants) were ob­tained af­ter in­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tions were con­duct­ed in an ef­fort to sub­stan­ti­ate var­i­ous as­pects of that in­for­ma­tion."

He said the po­lice ac­tions were jus­ti­fied. "Yes, he (Al Shubaili) has a diplo­mat­ic pass­port, but he al­so had in his pos­ses­sion, a T&T pass­port in some­one else's name, and he had many emp­ty visa forms," Craig said. "All of this would have led to some sus­pi­cion and war­rant­ed some in­ves­ti­ga­tion tak­ing place and it could on­ly have been done there and then, when we went to the room, be­cause it is not nor­mal with visas be­ing is­sued in a ho­tel room." He added af­ter sev­er­al phone calls were made, he was able to ver­i­fy the rea­son for Al Shubaili's pres­ence in the coun­try. How­ev­er, the T&T Guardian was told by re­li­able po­lice sources on Tues­day that they re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that a man dressed like a Pak­istani na­tion­al was at the ho­tel and ap­peared to have guns and am­mu­ni­tion in his pos­ses­sion.

The re­port al­so stat­ed, an of­fi­cer said, that there were sev­er­al peo­ple go­ing to and from Al Shubaili's room. Ac­cord­ing to Craig, at no time did the po­lice in­tend to em­bar­rass any­one. "I was sat­is­fied that that in­di­vid­ual was in Trinidad for a le­git­i­mate pur­pose and his pres­ence did not im­pact na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty," he said. "I con­clud­ed that this was a sit­u­a­tion above board and there­fore I al­lowed him to car­ry out his busi­ness. "I apol­o­gised to Mr Al Shubaili for any in­con­ve­nience I, or any po­lice of­fi­cer, may have caused. "At no time did the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice or any­body at­tempt or try to em­bar­rass any Mus­lim in­di­vid­ual in our so­ci­ety." He said Al Shubaili's de­par­ture was on sched­ule and he did not cut his vis­it short be­cause of what had tran­spired.

The se­nior law­man added that even though Al Shubaili had a diplo­mat­ic pass­port, he was not ac­cred­it­ed by this coun­try. He said based his past ex­pe­ri­ences in deal­ing with drugs and in­ter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism, sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als had used diplo­mat­ic pass­ports to per­pe­trate il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties, through­out the world. Nafeesa Mo­hammed, le­gal of­fi­cer in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, said the po­lice should be com­mend­ed for the man­ner in which they dealt with the sit­u­a­tion. She said the en­tire in­ci­dent was blown out of pro­por­tion. Zabar Baksh, pres­i­dent of Caribbean Haj Unit­ed, said in the past, Sau­di Ara­bi­an diplo­mats had con­duct­ed sim­i­lar busi­ness at Hilton Trinidad.