Of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit have ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at Ra­dio Jaagri­ti for ev­i­dence in re­la­tion to an al­leged au­dio-vi­su­al clip, which aired on Tues­day 16th April, 2019.

This is ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

It said that of­fi­cers, led by In­spec­tor Wayne Stan­ley, pro­ceed­ed to the ra­dio sta­tion, lo­cat­ed at Pasea Main Road, Tu­na­puna, with the ob­jec­tive of ver­i­fy­ing the au­then­tic­i­ty of the clip and to ob­tain a copy of the record­ing, for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

The state­ment said that on ar­rival at the sta­tion, the of­fi­cers met and spoke with two of­fi­cials and a search war­rant for ev­i­dence un­der Sec­tion 13 of the Sedi­tion Act, Chap­ter 11:04, was shown to them.

It said that a mas­ter copy of an au­dio-vi­su­al record­ing was sub­se­quent­ly hand­ed over to in­ves­ti­ga­tors and that the en­tire ex­er­cise was in­ci­dent free.

What does the Sedi­tion Act state?

Sec­tion three of the Act de­fines sedi­tion:

3. (1) A sedi­tious in­ten­tion is an in­ten­tion— (a) to bring in­to ha­tred or con­tempt, or to ex­cite dis­af­fec­tion against Gov­ern­ment or the Con­sti­tu­tion as by law es­tab­lished or the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives or the Sen­ate or the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice; (b) to ex­cite any per­son to at­tempt, oth­er­wise than by law­ful means, to pro­cure the al­ter­ation of any mat­ter in the State by law es­tab­lished; (c) to raise dis­con­tent or dis­af­fec­tion amongst in­hab­i­tants of Trinidad and To­ba­go; (d) to en­gen­der or pro­mote— (i) feel­ings of ill-will or hos­til­i­ty be­tween one or more sec­tions of the com­mu­ni­ty on the one hand and any oth­er sec­tion or sec­tions of the com­mu­ni­ty on the oth­er hand; or (ii) feel­ings of ill-will to­wards, hos­til­i­ty to or con­tempt for any class of in­hab­i­tants of Trinidad and To­ba­go dis­tin­guished by race, colour, re­li­gion, pro­fes­sion, call­ing or em­ploy­ment; or (e) to ad­vo­cate or pro­mote, with in­tent to de­stroy in whole or in part any iden­ti­fi­able group, the com­mis­sion of any of the fol­low­ing acts, name­ly: (i) killing mem­bers of the group; or (ii) de­lib­er­ate­ly in­flict­ing on the group con­di­tions of life cal­cu­lat­ed to bring about its phys­i­cal de­struc­tion.

Sec­tion 13 of the Sedi­tion Act, Chap­ter 11.04 states:

"If a Mag­is­trate is sat­is­fied by in­for­ma­tion on oath that there is rea­son­able cause to be­lieve that an of­fence un­der this Act has been or is about to be com­mit­ted he may grant a search war­rant au­tho­ris­ing any po­lice of­fi­cer to en­ter any premis­es or place named in the war­rant, with such as­sis­tance as may be nec­es­sary, and if nec­es­sary by force, and to search the premis­es or place and every per­son found there­in and to seize any­thing found on the premis­es or place which the of­fi­cer has rea­son­able ground for sus­pect­ing to be ev­i­dence of an of­fence un­der this Act."