Shal­iza Has­sanali

A cou­ple be­lieved to be Is­raelis-who en­tered T&T soil with fraud­u­lent pass­ports-has es­caped five months af­ter they were put in a ho­tel un­der se­cu­ri­ty watch at Caribbean Air­line's (CAL) ex­pense.The five months the duo spent at the ho­tel, CAL paid for their ac­com­mo­da­tion and meals, rack­ing up a hefty bill.The cou­ple es­caped on No­vem­ber 20, from Com­fort Suite Ho­tel, Pi­ar­co, while be­ing guard­ed by CAL's se­cu­ri­ty, days be­fore Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that po­lice thwart­ed a plot to as­sas­si­nate her and four mem­bers of her Cab­i­net.Con­cerns have been raised by well placed na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel over the man­ner in which the mat­ter was han­dled.

Though their pass­ports were seized by Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, it is not sure if the want­ed cou­ple fled the coun­try us­ing false pass­ports or are still hid­ing in T&T.The 28-year-old woman iden­ti­fied as Anas­ta­sia Ku­rakin along with her 34-year-old male coun­ter­part Robert Ochakovsky, land­ed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port from St Maarten on June 6, with false Is­raeli pass­ports.The pass­ports were is­sued on Jan­u­ary 26, 2004 in Ris­hon Lezion, Is­rael.The duo-pre­tend­ing to be a hus­band and wife team-were des­tined for Cana­da, but was in­ter­cept­ed in St Maarten af­ter be­ing pre-checked. "St Maarten did not do any­thing with them so they came here (Trinidad)," a source said.

Put on alert by St Maarten's Im­mi­gra­tion, the cou­ple were picked up by se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers af­ter they at­tempt­ed to board CAL flight No 600 to Toron­to, Cana­da on June 7. That was af­ter they had spent some time in Trinidad.Up­on check­ing, se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered that the pho­tographs on the cou­ple's Is­raeli pass­ports were to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent to their per­son."They were hand­ed over to im­mi­gra­tion de­part­ment who was a bit scep­ti­cal as to whether their pass­ports were le­git­i­mate or not be­cause the cou­ple kept threat­en­ing to take le­gal ac­tion for de­tain­ing them. They had peo­ple claim­ing to be lawyers call­ing im­mi­gra­tion for an­swers," a well placed source told the Sun­day Guardian.

Im­mi­gra­tion then gave or­ders that they should be placed in CAL's care un­der se­cu­ri­ty watch, in­stead of tak­ing them to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty's de­ten­tion cen­tre.The source said in or­der for CAL to in­ter­vene, a Re­jec­tion Or­der should have been is­sued by Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion. How­ev­er, this was not done."Once a pas­sen­ger over­stays his/her time or is a threat to the coun­try, you are put on the next avail­able flight," a source said.With­out a Re­jec­tion Or­der, the source said, CAL can­not be held re­spon­si­ble, fined or placed on a bond for their ac­tions."All the air­line was do­ing was fol­low­ing in­struc­tions by Im­mi­gra­tion," the source said.By then, in­for­ma­tion ob­tained from in­tel­li­gence, the source said, sus­pect­ed that the cou­ple are Rus­sians.

Spe­cial Branch, In­dex and oth­er agen­cies were no­ti­fied of the cou­ple's fraud­u­lent doc­u­ments and de­ten­tion, the source added.The im­pos­tors were hand­ed over to CAL se­cu­ri­ty, pend­ing cor­re­spon­dents from the Is­raeli Gov­ern­ment to de­ter­mine their true iden­ti­ties.Post­ed on the wall at Im­mi­gra­tion of­fice were the cou­ple's true iden­ti­ty along with im­ages of their fake pass­ports."This meant that Im­mi­gra­tion had in­for­ma­tion of who the hold­ers of the pass­ports were. These peo­ple should have been locked up and pros­e­cut­ed. You can­not have things like this pushed un­der the car­pet. One slip can put our coun­try at risk be­cause you don't know who is who out there," the an­gry source added.The source said they are still baf­fled as to how the cou­ple es­caped."We don't know how they ab­scond­ed. Know­ing that they have been un­der watch for this length of time and are well fi­nanced it would have been easy for them to cor­rupt some­one. That is my sus­pi­cion."

The source said the cou­ple knew of the se­cu­ri­ty's op­er­a­tions and made a pret­ty clean es­cape.Nicholas to launch in­ves­ti­ga­tion.Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, CAL's se­nior se­cu­ri­ty Kurt Gould re­fused to com­ment.Ef­forts to reach Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy proved fu­tile.Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj said he could not com­ment as he had no facts on the mat­ter.CAL's chair­man George Nicholas III said he was not aware of the mat­ter. "That would be an Im­mi­gra­tion is­sue."Told that CAL were the ones that put the de­tainees at the ho­tel, he added: "I am not aware of that. I am not aware of the specifics. I do know that we are in­creas­ing our se­cu­ri­ty."Nicholas promised to launch a full-scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter.