Asha Javeed

Con­sul­tant Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

The State’s file on firearms deal­er Brent Thomas, lodged at the for­mer Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty (now Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty), has gone miss­ing.

The Sun­day Guardian was told that af­ter the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion as­sumed of­fice and a re­quest was made for the file, which would have in­clud­ed all min­is­te­r­i­al sup­port and re­quests for the ar­rest and re­turn of Thomas to Trinidad by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) from Bar­ba­dos on Oc­to­ber 5, 2022, they be­came aware that it was miss­ing.

Yes­ter­day, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge con­firmed the file was in­deed miss­ing but de­clined to say more on the mat­ter at this time.

He did not re­spond to fur­ther ques­tions from the Sun­day Guardian on when the file was no­ticed miss­ing, what it means for in­sti­tu­tion­al ac­count­abil­i­ty or what it would mean for a po­ten­tial com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to what ex­act­ly tran­spired in Thomas’ case.

For­mer min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty Mar­vin Gon­za­les said that dur­ing his short time in the min­istry, the file nev­er crossed his desk.

“At that time, it was al­ready be­fore the courts,” he said.

For his part, for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said he has re­served all pub­lic com­ment on any pub­lic mat­ters.

The mat­ter, which is now over three years old, was raised last week by Prime Min­is­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the 50th Cari­com Sum­mit in St Kitts and Nevis.

In her ad­dress, she de­scribed the in­ci­dent when Thomas was de­tained in Bar­ba­dos and re­turned to Trinidad and To­ba­go aboard a mil­i­tary air­craft as a “kid­nap­ping.”

Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley re­ject­ed the use of the term “kid­nap­ping,” call­ing it “a scur­rilous lie and defam­a­to­ry in the ex­treme.”

Mot­t­ley told the me­dia that of­fi­cial records show that Trinidad and To­ba­go po­lice pre­sent­ed ar­rest war­rants to their Bar­ba­di­an coun­ter­parts, who act­ed on them, mak­ing it in­ac­cu­rate to por­tray the mat­ter as a uni­lat­er­al ab­duc­tion by Bar­ba­dos au­thor­i­ties.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had coun­tered that she did not sin­gle out Bar­ba­dos for blame but stood firm in her state­ment, say­ing it fol­lowed what the High Court ruled on the mat­ter.

“And now it is the gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos that has to use tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars from Bar­ba­dos to pay Mr Brent Thomas’ dam­ages. They ac­cept­ed li­a­bil­i­ty, the AG ac­cept­ed li­a­bil­i­ty for the ac­tions. And what more can I say? Where’s the lie then?” she had said.

On Fri­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her Cab­i­net would con­sid­er es­tab­lish­ing a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Thomas af­fair, but the po­ten­tial cost of such an ex­er­cise will be a key fac­tor in de­ter­min­ing whether it in fact pro­ceeds.

Yes­ter­day, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP), Op­er­a­tions, Curt Si­mon, when asked about the mat­ter, said that the po­lice probe in­to the con­duct of its of­fi­cers was still on.

On Oc­to­ber 5, 2022, Thomas was tak­en from his ho­tel by mem­bers of the Roy­al Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force while en route to the US to seek med­ical treat­ment fol­low­ing his ar­rest days ear­li­er (Sep­tem­ber 29), with­out any charges be­ing laid, in Trinidad. The Bar­ba­dos po­lice had been pro­vid­ed with copies of six ar­rest war­rants for Thomas on charges of be­ing in pos­ses­sion of grenades and au­to­mat­ic ri­fles.

Thomas was de­tained by Bar­ba­dos po­lice and then hand­ed over to three Trinidad and To­ba­go po­lice of­fi­cers- DCP Suzette Mar­tin, Nigel Birch and Cor­po­ral Joe­field- at the Grant­ley Adams In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, on war­rants that he had in his pos­ses­sions of pro­hib­i­tive weapons.

“The mat­ter is still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed. We are deal­ing with cer­tain is­sues as it re­lates to Caribbean IM­PACS, RSS (Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tem), and state­ments from of­fi­cers in Bar­ba­dos, and all of those must go through Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty,” he said.

Si­mon said he has not yet in­ter­viewed DCP Mar­tin on the mat­ter, ex­plain­ing that he is very care­ful with his in­ves­ti­ga­tions and col­lat­ing his in­for­ma­tion be­fore deal­ing with a mat­ter.

On April 25, 2023, Thomas scored a con­sti­tu­tion­al vic­to­ry in the coun­try’s courts against the State (un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion) over what High Court judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad said was his ab­duc­tion in Bar­ba­dos and rul­ing that the de­ten­tion and re­moval amount­ed to an abuse of process.

While the State had ap­pealed the judge’s rul­ing, on Sep­tem­ber 16, 2025, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie opt­ed to dis­con­tin­ue the mat­ter and apol­o­gised to Thomas and said he would en­ter in­to a good faith ne­go­ti­a­tions re­gard­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al dam­ages and costs both in the High Court and Court of Ap­peal.

The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that Thomas’s lawyers have made pro­pos­als in terms of com­pen­sa­tion and are await­ing feed­back from the State.

The Ram­per­sad judg­ment

In his con­clu­sion, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad made sev­er­al ob­ser­va­tions about the mat­ter.

He de­scribed Thomas’s re­turn to T&T as an ab­duc­tion.

Thomas had in­formed the TTPS that he was on his way to see a doc­tor in the US, but the po­lice said they took the steps to get him in cus­tody in Bar­ba­dos af­ter they re­ceived in­tel­li­gence that he in­tend­ed to trav­el to Greece.

Last week, Mot­t­ley, in re­spond­ing to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s words, said that :“To de­scribe it as a kid­nap­ping is a most un­for­tu­nate term be­cause ar­rest war­rants were pre­sent­ed by the Trinidad po­lice to the Bar­ba­dos po­lice. As to what hap­pened, we don’t know be­cause we don’t get in­volved in op­er­a­tional mat­ters. So, as it tran­spired, we, in fact, knew noth­ing about it. It is on­ly when this mat­ter be­came a pub­lic is­sue that we then had to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what tran­spired, and it was clear that the Trinidad and To­ba­go po­lice, as has been the prac­tice for decades in this re­gion, would have sup­plied an ar­rest war­rant which the Bar­ba­dos po­lice would have act­ed up­on.”

Ram­per­sad’s judg­ment out­lined more clear­ly what un­fold­ed.

He not­ed that “it is un­doubt­ed­ly an in­escapable in­fer­ence that the Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force de­tained the first claimant up­on the re­quest of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, whether through ASP Birch or oth­er­wise. There was no oth­er rea­son giv­en as to why the Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force would have de­tained him be­cause there was no ev­i­dence of any il­le­gal­i­ty com­mit­ted by the first de­fen­dant while in Bar­ba­dos, such as would have ren­dered him li­able for ar­rest and de­ten­tion.”

“It is un­avoid­ably ap­par­ent that the ma­chin­ery of that de­ten­tion be­gan here in Trinidad and To­ba­go with the clear in­ten­tion to by­pass the ex­tra­di­tion process and there­by de­ny the ap­pli­ca­tion of the law. That scheme was plain­ly un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. Fur­ther, by tak­ing cus­tody and con­trol of the first claimant in Bar­ba­dos and bring­ing him back with­in the ju­ris­dic­tion to then charge him, the breach of due process was crys­tallised un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion,” he said.

“Words can­not ex­press the ab­hor­rence that the court feels to­wards this un­law­ful act in a sup­posed civilised so­ci­ety gov­erned by a Con­sti­tu­tion in which the free­doms of the cit­i­zens are sup­posed to be pro­tect­ed,” he said.

“That a po­lice of­fi­cer, no less, can leave this ju­ris­dic­tion in what the first claimant de­scribed to be a non-com­mer­cial air­plane owned by the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force – de­tails of which ASP Birch seems to have de­lib­er­ate­ly ex­clud­ed - clear­ly demon­strates the in­ten­tion to get the first claimant at all costs. The lev­el of the de­ter­mi­na­tion to bring the first claimant un­der his con­trol seems al­most ob­ses­sive,” he said.

Ram­per­said said that ASP Birch and Se­nior Supt Mar­tin, along with Cor­po­ral Joe­field, would have known when they flew out of Trinidad on Oc­to­ber 5, that they were go­ing to re­cov­er the first claimant, who was de­tained in Bar­ba­dos with­out any charges pend­ing against him there and with­out any of­fence hav­ing been com­mit­ted by him in Bar­ba­dos.

“The sole rea­son for his de­ten­tion in Bar­ba­dos, there­fore, would ob­vi­ous­ly have been for him to be de­prived of his lib­er­ty suf­fi­cient for ASP Birch, SS Mar­tin and Cor­po­ral Joe­field to go to Bar­ba­dos and re­turn him to Trinidad un­der their cus­tody. They ob­vi­ous­ly had no ju­ris­dic­tion to de­tain the first claimant in Bar­ba­dos. The in­ten­tion, there­fore, was to have him de­tained there and to forcibly abduct him un­der the pre­tence of po­lice le­git­i­ma­cy, since there is no ev­i­dence that the first claimant ac­com­pa­nied this con­tin­gent from Trinidad will­ing­ly. There is no sug­ges­tion that he was even af­ford­ed le­gal ad­vice while un­der the de­ten­tion of the Bar­ba­dos po­lice.

“To my mind, it is no de­fence to say that the un­law­ful­ness took place out­side of the ju­ris­dic­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the re­turn of the first claimant to Trinidad was mere hap­pen­stance. This was all by de­sign. A de­sign hatched in Trinidad and To­ba­go, ex­e­cut­ed in Bar­ba­dos up­on the re­quest and di­rec­tion of the TTPS, fruc­ti­fied on the tar­mac of the Grant­ley Adams Air­port in Bar­ba­dos and fi­nalised up­on their re­turn to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the judge con­clud­ed.

Back­ground

Thomas is the own­er of Spe­cial­ist Shoot­ers Train­ing Cen­tre (SSTC) in San Juan.

Ac­cord­ing to his af­fi­davit, he has been this coun­try’s lead­ing re­tail­er of arms and am­mu­ni­tions from about 2000, and was a li­censed firearms and am­mu­ni­tions deal­er since June 14, 1999.

For over two decades, he said, he and his com­pa­ny have sup­plied arms, am­mu­ni­tion, se­cu­ri­ty fa­cil­i­ties and ser­vices and re­lat­ed ac­cou­trements to State en­ti­ties in­clud­ing the TTPS, the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force, the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the Unit­ed Na­tions Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Ju­di­cia­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

For his part, Thomas had said last year, af­ter the State apol­o­gised and with­drew its ap­peal, that :“The ad­mis­sion of guilt on the Row­ley gov­ern­ment’s part, in my opin­ion, should be du­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed to un­der­stand more of who, how, and why the loss of in­di­vid­ual rights could be so eas­i­ly swept away with due process. Hav­ing re­flect­ed on my sit­u­a­tion since and over these chal­leng­ing years of so much per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al loss, the ex­tra ju­di­cial forces in our coun­try should con­cern us all.”