Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds says lo­cal crim­i­nals flee­ing to the Unit­ed King­dom to seek asy­lum to “avoid ac­count­abil­i­ty to the law,” was one of the rea­sons T&T na­tion­als now re­quire a visa to trav­el there.

On Wednes­day, British High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T Jon Dean re­vealed that T&T cit­i­zens would no longer be el­i­gi­ble to trav­el to the UK un­der the Elec­tron­ic Trav­el Au­tho­ri­sa­tion (ETA) scheme and would re­quire a visa to en­ter the coun­try.

The de­ci­sion, he said, was due to a spike in the num­ber of lo­cals seek­ing asy­lum.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Hinds echoed what he stat­ed in a Face­book post hours be­fore, where he said: “In cir­cum­stances where our crim­i­nals, their sup­port­ers and their sup­port­ed as well as cer­tain cat­e­gories of per­sons have tar­get­ed the UK to flee our coun­try, in some cas­es to avoid ac­count­abil­i­ty to the law and to you.”

Hinds said this led to in­creased num­bers of such in­di­vid­u­als seek­ing asy­lum in the UK.

But he went fur­ther yes­ter­day, de­scrib­ing the de­vel­op­ment as “un­for­tu­nate” but ad­mit­ted that the rea­son­ing put for­ward for the visa re­stric­tions was “not new” to Gov­ern­ment.

He added that Gov­ern­ment was aware of some cit­i­zens flee­ing T&T. He said that while crime was a chal­lenge, in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships would con­tin­ue even with the visa stip­u­la­tion.

“The work of the law en­force­ment plat­form in T&T is well un­der­way and it’s ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue be­cause we do face a crime prob­lem in the coun­try and like many oth­er coun­tries of the world we have to con­tin­ue to work, so notwith­stand­ing what any oth­er State does... and we col­lab­o­rate with oth­er States.”

Hinds added the British gov­ern­ment was with­in its right to in­tro­duce such a pol­i­cy if they saw fit.

He was al­so hope­ful that fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the British and T&T would lead to a re­duc­tion in the num­ber of peo­ple mak­ing asy­lum re­quests.

How­ev­er, ACP Crime and Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Richard Smith said crim­i­nals, who al­ready fled T&T and have con­tin­ued their crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es from abroad, are still with­in reach of the TTPS and could be brought back to face charges. Smith said lo­cal po­lice would con­tin­ue to ful­fil their du­ties by pur­su­ing crim­i­nals even across bor­ders with the nec­es­sary sup­port from in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts.

“Even though they feel they can run and hide from the au­thor­i­ties here... even if we have out­stand­ing war­rants for them, if they are want­ed for crim­i­nal of­fences here, we can make the nec­es­sary arrange­ments and have them here.

“Once they come in­to cus­tody across there they might find them in a road ex­er­cise, by some means they would come in­to the cus­tody of the British au­thor­i­ties and once they com­mu­ni­cate with us, we can get them back here and deal with them ac­cord­ing to law.”

Smith said he could not con­firm whether or not British au­thor­i­ties re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion from lo­cal po­lice as part of their de­lib­er­a­tions in this re­cent de­ci­sion, or if the in­for­ma­tion was put for­ward from their own in­tel­li­gence agen­cies.

But one po­lice of­fi­cer, in an in­ves­tiga­tive unit who asked not to be named, said while it was pos­si­ble to have crim­i­nals and gang lead­ers brought back to T&T, gath­er­ing the ev­i­dence to fa­cil­i­tate such would re­quire sig­nif­i­cant in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Asked how sus­pect­ed gang­sters may have been able to leave the coun­try in the first place, the of­fi­cer ex­plained that once some­one was not charged with a crime, they were free to leave and en­ter an­oth­er coun­try, at the dis­cre­tion of that coun­try’s gov­ern­ment.

De­spite this, the of­fi­cer main­tained that po­lice close­ly mon­i­tored the move­ment of peo­ple in and out of T&T us­ing a trav­el in­dex avail­able from the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion.

The trav­el in­dex, he said was a com­put­er data­base which records the en­try and ex­it of cit­i­zens out of T&T.

Mean­while, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said in­tel­li­gence col­lab­o­ra­tions be­tween both coun­tries’ law en­force­ment agen­cies would con­tin­ue through­out the visa re­stric­tion.

“Tight­en­ing up UK bor­ders is some­thing that will help to stem that flow of drugs and tight­en­ing up the UK bor­ders is some­thing that will help to stem that flow of drugs.

Hinds, Gary in pub­lic spat

The fall­out from the UK’s new visa pol­i­cy has es­ca­lat­ed in­to a pub­lic spat be­tween Hinds and Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) po­lit­i­cal leader Gary Grif­fith.

The NTA leader in a state­ment Wednes­day said a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion was avert­ed in 2014 when he was na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter.

Dur­ing the NTA’s meet­ing in Mt Lam­bert lat­er that day, he dou­bled down on the claims, say­ing he did every­thing UK of­fi­cials asked to en­sure visa free trav­el re­mained for lo­cals then.

In a Face­book post, for­mer High Com­mis­sion­er to the UK Garvin Nicholas sup­port­ed Grif­fith’s claims: “To be clear, 2010 to 2015 not on­ly did we pre­serve the visa free ac­cess to the UK, we ex­tend­ed it to all of the Schen­gen Eu­rope.”

Hinds, how­ev­er, dis­missed Grif­fith’s claims as “pure fic­ti­tious imag­i­na­tion.” In a scathing Face­book post on Wednes­day evening, he re­ferred to Grif­fith as “Gar­ru­lous G-String” and de­nied that any such se­cu­ri­ty threat or dis­cus­sion took place in 2014.

Re­spond­ing to Hinds’ re­marks yes­ter­day, Grif­fith la­belled him “not on­ly the most in­com­pe­tent min­is­ter ever but al­so a bla­tant liar.”