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Sunday, March 16, 2025

Make missing ammo findings public, says former national security minister

by

Shane Superville
17 days ago
20250227
Former National Security minister Brig Gen John Sandy

Former National Security minister Brig Gen John Sandy

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter and ret’d Brig Gen­er­al John Sandy says he was alarmed to hear re­cent re­ports al­leg­ing that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25,573 rounds of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion were miss­ing but hopes the mat­ter can be set­tled and made pub­lic to ease the na­tion’s con­cerns.

Sandy served as the De­fence Force’s Chief of De­fence Staff (CDS) from 2000 to 2002 and was ap­point­ed as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter in 2010 by the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship coali­tion gov­ern­ment be­fore he was ap­point­ed as the per­ma­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tive for T&T to the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) Of­fice, Gene­va, Switzer­land, in 2012.

Ac­cord­ing to me­dia re­ports last week, the miss­ing am­mu­ni­tion was re­vealed dur­ing an au­dit at the Cu­mu­to Bar­racks ear­li­er in Feb­ru­ary.

The spent shells of 5.56 and 7.62 am­mu­ni­tion bear­ing Reg­i­ment and De­fence Force mark­ings have been found at the scene of sev­er­al mur­ders and shoot­ings in re­cent years.

An in­ves­tiga­tive team con­sist­ing of ret’d Col Lyle Alexan­der, ret’d ACP Welling­ton Vir­gil, ret’d ACP Mar­tin Mur­rain, ret’d Col Michael Clarke, and ret’d war­rant of­fi­cer Wayne Ngui.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Sandy, who now lives abroad, said he knew the for­mer sol­diers well and was con­fi­dent in their abil­i­ty to thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter, which he said was of great con­cern to the coun­try, and said he was hope­ful their find­ings could be made pub­lic.

“I cer­tain­ly hope it’s made pub­lic. In fact, that’s a ne­ces­si­ty.

“Peo­ple may be un­der the im­pres­sion that all this am­mu­ni­tion, what­ev­er the fi­nal fig­ure is, is out­side there some­where and some­one you don’t want us­ing it has the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of us­ing it.

“So I await with bat­ed breath to see what comes from it.”

Sandy added that dur­ing a re­cent vis­it to T&T, he was told by some­one that the am­mu­ni­tion may not be ac­tu­al­ly miss­ing, but the dis­crep­an­cies in the fi­nal fig­ure may be due to a ‘cler­i­cal er­ror,’ stress­ing that he could not ver­i­fy if this was the case, he hoped it was sim­ply a mis­un­der­stand­ing, as the con­se­quences of lost am­mu­ni­tion would be too dire for the coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty.

He added that he was al­so con­fused as to how such a ma­jor loss of equip­ment could have hap­pened, as he un­der­stood there were metic­u­lous checks on the Reg­i­ment’s stock.

“When I heard of it, I won­dered how that could have hap­pened be­cause there are so many checks and bal­ances on a dai­ly, week­ly and month­ly ba­sis to en­sure some­thing like this doesn’t hap­pen.

“This is some­thing I would hate to learn ac­tu­al­ly oc­curred, so I’m hop­ing it is re­al­ly a mis­un­der­stand­ing; there are too many hor­ri­ble pos­si­bil­i­ties of this am­mu­ni­tion end­ing up in the hands of peo­ple we don’t want it to.”

Dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and an­ti-crime strate­gies in March 2023, CDS Air Vice Mar­shall Dar­ryl Daniel re­spond­ed to ques­tions on the dis­cov­ery of spent Reg­i­ment and De­fence Force shells at crime scenes, de­scrib­ing the trend as “con­cern­ing,” adding that while the De­fence Force con­tin­ued to work with the po­lice in in­ves­ti­gat­ing the trend, no sol­diers were brought be­fore a court mar­tial be­tween 2022 up to the time of the com­mit­tee.

He al­so lament­ed that de­spite there be­ing “strin­gent” mea­sures in place to reg­u­late the use of arms and am­mu­ni­tion, un­re­li­a­bil­i­ty on the part of some sol­diers may be con­tribut­ing to the prob­lem.

“The chal­lenge is the hu­man fac­tor is part of it. You have peo­ple who un­der­stand their role and func­tions or should un­der­stand their role and func­tion, and some­times they may not live up to what is ex­pect­ed; hence, you would have to take the nec­es­sary ac­tion from a mil­i­tary per­spec­tive and a law per­spec­tive to ad­dress those is­sues.

“You would ap­pre­ci­ate that ev­i­dence has to be col­lect­ed and con­nect­ed back to an in­di­vid­ual for you to pros­e­cute them, and that is some­thing which is not eas­i­ly done.

“There is a trust fac­tor when it comes to mem­bers of the de­fence force be­cause we deal with arms and am­mu­ni­tion. We’re out there ... go­ing out on pa­trol, you’re giv­en a weapon and am­mu­ni­tion to go and do your du­ty, and hope­ful­ly, you won’t have to use it,” Daniel said at the time.

When asked if he had any ad­vice for the cur­rent lead­er­ship of the Reg­i­ment on how to en­sure trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, Sandy said while he could of­fer some sug­ges­tions, he pre­ferred to do so in per­son.

Guardian Me­dia tried to con­tact ret’d Col Lyle Alexan­der for com­ment on whether there was a dead­line for the team to com­plete the probe but was un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.


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