Richard Lord

Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Dr Kei­th Row­ley is de­scrib­ing as "ab­solute non­sense" claims by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that she was un­aware of the ex­is­tence of Strate­gic In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA) un­til re­cent­ly. Row­ley said Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as at­tor­ney gen­er­al and act­ing prime min­is­ter in the 1995 to 2001 gov­ern­ments of Bas­deo Pan­day, would have served on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil and, as a con­se­quence, would have known about the work of the SIA.

Row­ley was ad­dress­ing about 500 peo­ple at the 42nd An­nu­al Con­fer­ence of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's Women's League at the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers' Trade Union hall, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. "There is no way that Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar could not have known of the ex­is­tence of the SIA and what they were up too," he aid.

Row­ley not­ed that the SIA was formed af­ter the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, which was staged by the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen. He said it was based on a rec­om­men­da­tion from Scot­land Yard of­fi­cials, which led to the es­tab­lish­ment of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), which was gov­erned by leg­is­la­tion and the SIA which had no leg­isla­tive sta­tus. Row­ley said while there re­mained an ur­gent need to le­galise the op­er­a­tions of the agency, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed the names of peo­ple be­ing spied on by the SIA to de­flect at­ten­tion from the con­tro­ver­sial dis­missal of Fazeer Mo­hammed for a cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme on state-owned Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG).

Row­ley said every sin­gle arm of the state's se­cu­ri­ty, in­clud­ing the army, coast guard and spe­cial branch po­lice, were en­gaged on spy­ing on the pop­u­la­tion. He said army, coast guard, po­lice, SSA and SIA in­tel­li­gence "were all�en­gaged in ob­tain­ing in­for­ma­tion in a clan­des­tine man­ner." Row­ley said for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj "had a great in­ter­est in us­ing the SIA." Row­ley added: "If the truth be told, it was not the first time that UNC min­is­ters and Op­po­si­tion mem­bers came to the at­ten­tion of the se­cret ser­vices and they had files on them," Row­ley said. "The files would have their date of ori­gin un­der the very UNC cab­i­net un­der the stew­ard­ship of Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj."

Row­ley said he want­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar to an­swer a few ques­tions which were:

�2 "Tell me that it is not cor­rect to say that a lot of the in­for­ma­tion that came to us about the fa­mous flat in Lon­don and the (then) prime min­is­ter's chil­dren and their pri­vate af­fairs in Lon­don came to them by the said SIA and sim­i­lar spy agen­cies. Tell me that is not so."

�2 "Tell me that the last prime min­is­ter, Bas­deo Pan­day, was not in con­trol of the SSA and some­body else was in con­trol of the SIA and part of the col­lapse of the UNC gov­ern­ment had to be with the coun­ter­ing of these two agen­cies in dif­fer­ent hands. Tell us so." Row­ley added: "So when you (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) come to buss the mark on Fri­day and want to make it look like it's some­thing the PNM cre­at­ed in this coun­try and want to blame the PNM, we will not ac­cept that."

Row­ley said the is­sue now in the pub­lic do­main over the il­le­gal spy­ing on pri­vate cit­i­zens was a "scan­dal, a mess and a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cern." He in­sist­ed the dis­clo­sure de­mand­ed the im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion of cit­i­zens. He said, how­ev­er, it can­not be "that the Gov­ern­ment must be al­lowed to cher­ry-pick what they want to tell us� and what they don't tell us." Row­ley de­clared: "I will not be com­fort­able with the Gov­ern­ment be­ing the sole ar­biter and rec­ti­fi­er in this mat­ter be­cause what they will do is se­lec­tive­ly re­move from the body of in­for­ma­tion col­lect­ed any­thing detri­men­tal to them." Row­ley said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment would "pro­mote and use any­thing detri­men­tal to any­body else...That is not how a coun­try treats with a cri­sis like this."

He want­ed to know how the Gov­ern­ment would deal with the is­sue of guard­ing the guards in this coun­try. Row­ley said there re­mained the need for se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies to con­tin­ue to find out what peo­ple were do­ing, es­pe­cial­ly the crim­i­nal el­e­ment. He said, how­ev­er, there must al­so be leg­is­la­tion to abuse their pow­er against law- abid­ing cit­i­zens of this coun­try. The Op­po­si­tion Leader said what was caus­ing the pub­lic out­rage against the dis­clo­sure was the iden­ti­ty of the names on the so-called spy list, peo­ple who do not ap­pear to be linked to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.