A mag­is­trate has sen­tenced a man who called the E999 emer­gency hot­line to threat­en to kill both Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to 14 days sim­ple im­pris­on­ment.

Mag­is­trate Alexan­der Prince, sit­ting at the Cou­va Court in Cen­tral Trinidad on Thurs­day, im­posed the sen­tence on Ian Sookram af­ter he was charged with mis­use of the tele­phone, con­trary to Sec­tion 106 (a) of the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act. He had threat­ened to cut off the heads of the prime min­is­ter and the top cop.

The court heard that Sookram, who plead­ed guilty to the charge, had on No­vem­ber 25 this year, at about 1.39 am (lo­cal time), called the E999 emer­gency hot­line and made the threats against Row­ley and Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

The Cen­tral Trinidad res­i­dent was lat­er ar­rest­ed and charged with the of­fence of ob­scene lan­guage, to which he was al­so sen­tenced to 14 days of sim­ple im­pris­on­ment.

Both sen­tences are to run con­cur­rent­ly.

The court heard that in April 2019, Sookram was al­so ar­rest­ed and charged with threat­en­ing then-com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and his wife, Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith.

On those charges, Sookram was sen­tenced to 14 days hard labour for the threat and 14 days hard labour for waste­ful em­ploy­ment of the po­lice time.