Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Unit­ed States’ find­ings that ex-po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith’s Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) was deemed cul­pa­ble of gross vi­o­la­tion of hu­man rights isn’t a mat­ter that will go away based on Grif­fith’s pen­chant for trad­ing in­sults with pub­lic of­fi­cials, says For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Amery Browne

“It will not be erased by any of his usu­al and con­stant chat­ter and de­flec­tion,” Browne said yes­ter­day, main­tain­ing Tues­day’s state­ments made by him­self and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds about Grif­fith.

And Browne has point­ed out there is no ap­plic­a­ble statute of lim­i­ta­tions on is­sues which Grif­fith may see as “old” mat­ters.

Browne and Hinds spoke at a me­dia con­fer­ence on Tues­day, re­spond­ing to state­ments by Grif­fith in a T&T Guardian ar­ti­cle. Af­ter Browne and Hinds spoke, Grif­fith re­spond­ed in an­oth­er state­ment, which in­clud­ed him claim­ing Browne gave “mis­in­for­ma­tion” and that SORT nev­er re­ceived fund­ing from the US gov­ern­ment. He chal­lenged both min­is­ters to prove oth­er­wise

But Browne yes­ter­day main­tained, “The facts are that the SORT unit that Grif­fith tri­umphed as his ‘brain­child’ has been deemed cul­pa­ble of gross vi­o­la­tions of hu­man rights by the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, and as a re­sult, that gov­ern­ment pro­ceed­ed to take mea­sures against T&T un­der the Leahy pro­vi­sions. They com­mu­ni­cat­ed this to Trinidad and To­ba­go via of­fi­cial diplo­mat­ic cor­re­spon­dence.

“It is de­plorable that some­one who seeks ad­di­tion­al pub­lic of­fice would be so brazen in try­ing to min­imise the very se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions of such find­ings, and these most re­cent re­ac­tions by Grif­fith fur­ther un­der­score his ab­solute un­suit­abil­i­ty. This is not a mat­ter that will go away based on Grif­fith’s pen­chant for trad­ing in­sults with pub­lic of­fi­cials.

Browne con­tin­ued, “It does not help Grif­fith’s cause to claim that these are old mat­ters be­cause there is no ap­plic­a­ble statute of lim­i­ta­tions. Grif­fith’s term as Com­mis­sion­er ran from 2018 to 2021, and his cur­rent ut­ter­ances seem aimed at white­wash­ing gross vi­o­la­tions of hu­man rights that oc­curred un­der his tenure by la­belling them as ‘old mat­ters’. In­deed, his flawed de­f­i­n­i­tion of what con­sti­tutes old mat­ters would cov­er every­thing (pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive) that he claimed dur­ing his tenure, which end­ed three years ago.”

Min­is­ters fight­ing po­lit­i­cal op­po­nent - Jayan­ti

How­ev­er at a UNC me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al said while noth­ing from Hinds sur­pris­es her any­more, she found it strange that “some­one of the cal­i­bre of Dr Amery Browne would par­tic­i­pate in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of in­for­ma­tion that was sup­posed to be in a diplo­mat­ic note, now, some years lat­er, in or­der to have en­gaged in some tit-for-tat/he say-she say with Gary Grif­fith”.

She said the Gov­ern­ment’s “tit for tat” with Grif­fith is a form of de­flec­tion from their fail­ure to deal with crime. But she want­ed to hear about se­ri­ous is­sues like what’s be­ing done to pre­serve the in­tegri­ty of in­tel­li­gence col­lect­ed by the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA).

Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al added, “Hinds will say he doesn’t know what’s go­ing on with the SSA a week af­ter he said he didn’t know about the RAU unit...so what Hinds doesn’t know isn’t the ques­tion - what does he know? He seems to know noth­ing, he feigns ig­no­rance on every­thing, but then he’ll mount a plat­form to talk about every­thing he knows about his now-po­lit­i­cal op­po­nent Gary Grif­fith.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said he felt the news con­fer­ence by the two min­is­ters was them giv­ing their per­spec­tive to Grif­fith’s views.

“We al­so have to look at if they’re in the process of cam­paign­ing for their per­spec­tive and what they’ll say in try­ing to counter Grif­fith’s views, since the PNM is prob­a­bly tak­ing him a lit­tle more se­ri­ous now than pre­vi­ous­ly,” Ra­goonath said.