Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is ques­tion­ing what da­ta the au­thors of an on­line re­port which ranked this coun­try as 12th on a list of the world’s 20 most dan­ger­ous coun­tries in the world used.

On Fri­day, a pub­li­ca­tion in the Busi­ness In­sid­er gave T&T the rank­ing af­ter not­ing that mur­ders, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and sex­u­al as­saults were on the in­crease in T&T.

But Young yes­ter­day dis­agreed with the re­port.

“I cer­tain­ly don’t think we rank 12th as the most dan­ger­ous coun­tries in the world. That is my opin­ion and liv­ing here etcetera.

“And when you look at the ar­ti­cle it­self, there is ab­solute­ly no sup­port­ing in­for­ma­tion of any mea­sure­ment as to how they come up with Trinidad be­ing at num­ber 12,” Young said on i95FM yes­ter­day.

He said the pub­li­ca­tion “claimed” it was quot­ing a cou­ple of sen­tences which was from a US State De­part­ment re­port.

“But those sen­tences are not backed by any sta­tis­tics,” Young added.

But in the wake of sev­er­al mur­ders which oc­curred over the week­end, Young said he was trou­bled not on­ly by every killing that has tak­en place but al­so every el­e­ment of crime.

Among those killed was na­tion­al award win­ner Haseena Ali, who was found dead at her home in Freeport. An au­top­sy has since re­vealed she was stabbed nine times be­fore her house was set on fire with her in it.

“Every sin­gle mur­der is of con­cern to the Gov­ern­ment and when you look at the num­ber of mur­ders, that is some­thing which is al­ways of con­cern to us as cit­i­zens,” Young said.

He said he was work­ing close­ly with law en­force­ment of­fi­cials to try and deal with these is­sues but urged the op­po­si­tion to stop politi­ciz­ing crime.

In re­sponse to the re­cent po­lice killings of five peo­ple in Laven­tille, the min­is­ter said while law en­force­ment of­fi­cers have the Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port, this did not equate to a li­cense to kill.

“There is no way and nowhere that po­lice are giv­en a li­cense to kill. What the Com­mis­sion­er has said is if you shoot at po­lice, ex­pect po­lice to shoot back.

“I main­tain the po­si­tion and it is the fi­nal po­si­tion and the on­ly ten­able po­si­tion that once po­lice of­fi­cers are op­er­at­ing with­in the perime­ters of the law then they have the Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port,” Young said.