RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Days af­ter a large cache of guns and am­mu­ni­tion was dis­cov­ered at the bond at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, po­lice of­fi­cers un­cov­ered yet an­oth­er large cache of guns and am­mu­ni­tion hid­den in­side a wash­ing ma­chine and a dry­er at a ware­house in Cou­va on Sun­day.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, around 9 pm, in­tel­li­gence was re­ceived by the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) which sug­gest­ed that a pack­age (car­go) con­tain­ing house­hold ap­pli­ances—a wash­er and a dry­er—was im­port­ed in­to Trinidad and the con­signee on the pack­age was iden­ti­fied.

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice, its in­tel­li­gence sug­gest­ed the ship­ment was housed at Med­way Lim­it­ed, a cus­toms ware­house sit­u­at­ed off the South­ern Main Road, McBean, Cou­va. The pack­age en­tered the coun­try some­time around the end of Feb­ru­ary.

Po­lice said on April 7, the con­signee ap­peared at the ware­house lo­ca­tion to take de­liv­ery of the items but be­fore the car­go was brought out for ex­am­i­na­tion, he left the ware­house with­out ex­pla­na­tion and to date hasn’t re­turned.

The items were sub­se­quent­ly re­turned to stor­age.

The SIU, act­ing on ad­di­tion­al in­tel­li­gence and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Cen­tral Gang In­tel­li­gence Team and in con­junc­tion with the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, start­ed an op­er­a­tion to iden­ti­fy the items con­tained in the pack­age.

On Mon­day morn­ing, per­son­nel from the SIU went to the Med­way Ware­house, lo­cat­ed at For­sis Com­plex, where the pack­age con­tain­ing the wash­er and dry­er was re­trieved and an ex­am­i­na­tion con­duct­ed.

The fol­low­ing items were dis­cov­ered con­cealed in both items:

* 200 rounds of 7.62mm Wolf per­for­mance brand.

* 150 rounds of 9mm Black Blaz­er brand.

* 20 box­es of pure hemp big bam­bi brand.

* 20 box­es of wrap­ping pa­per Big Bam­bi brand.

* 6 black 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion drums

* 3 black 5.56 mm am­mu­ni­tion drums

* 700 rounds of .45 Cal am­mo Cen­ter­fire brand

* 60 rounds of 5.56 mm am­mo. Amer­i­can Ea­gle brand.

* One MAG­PUL as­sault ri­fle with scope

* Three black 5.56mm mag­a­zines

* Four pis­tols each with 1 mag­a­zine.

* Two brown-coloured “rouni” at­tach­ments with scopes, which turns any pis­tol in­to an au­to­mat­ic fir­ing weapon

* Ten box­es of .40 Cal am­mo. 50 rounds per box

* Six .40 cal­i­bre ex­tend­ed mags

* 50 rounds of 9 mm hol­low point.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Med­way Lim­it­ed’s ware­hous­ing fa­cil­i­ty housed at For­sis Com­plex yes­ter­day, mem­bers of their se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel as­signed told the me­dia to leave.

Op­er­a­tions at the fa­cil­i­ty pro­ceed­ed as nor­mal, how­ev­er, as peo­ple were seen go­ing in and out of the busi­ness place. Fork­lift op­er­a­tors were busy mov­ing pack­ages in and out of the load­ing bays.

The build­ing is owned by Cen­tral pas­tor and busi­ness­man Win­ston Cuffie but is be­lieved to have been leased to the own­er of Med­way Lim­it­ed for many years. At­tempts to get a re­ac­tion from Cuffie about the il­le­gal find and raid proved fu­tile.

Ja­cob: Guns, am­mo part of il­lic­it transna­tion­al trade

The eye-open­ing arms dis­cov­er­ies over the past few days have raised con­cerns and fears among cit­i­zens that some­thing ter­ri­ble is about to hap­pen in the coun­try. How­ev­er, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc Don­ald Ja­cob said yes­ter­day there was no in­tel­li­gence to prove such.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Ja­cob said, “We have no such de­vel­op­ments from our in­tel­li­gence at all.”

He, how­ev­er, as­sured that there was, in fact, a sig­nif­i­cant de­mand for guns in the transna­tion­al trade in guns.

“Be­cause you may pay TT$2,000 and could sell for TT$15,000 to TT$18,000...so it could be a sig­nif­i­cant trade but in a few weeks’ time we’ll be able to say more as our in­tel­li­gence is work­ing on it but we don’t have any­thing so far to say that some­thing like that (re­fer­ring to a coup) is de­vel­op­ing,” Ja­cob said.

Ja­cob proud­ly added that the suc­cess has been the es­tab­lish­ment of a Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Bu­reau, “where we have the dif­fer­ent units work­ing to­geth­er with our in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners and we are get­ting the suc­cess that’s re­quired.”

He added,” Be­fore, we were de­pend­ing on just tak­ing the firearms off the streets in search­es and stop and search and now that our in­tel­li­gence ap­pa­ra­tus has de­vel­oped, we will have a greater im­pact in mak­ing that dent in the transna­tion­al net­work.”

Com­men­da­tion for law en­force­ment

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion com­mend­ed the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion on the re­cent seizures of con­tra­band for the month of April.

In re­sponse to the seizures, TTMA pres­i­dent Tri­cia Coos­al said, “Such seizures jus­ti­fy the TTMA’s con­cerns that il­lic­it trade is a threat to all facets of T&T, in­clud­ing the lives of the cit­i­zens and the econ­o­my of this twin-is­land Re­pub­lic.

“The TTMA firm­ly be­lieves that these seizures give cred­i­bil­i­ty to the Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus on tack­ling il­lic­it trade, in­clud­ing the cre­ation of the An­ti-Il­lic­it Trade Task Force by the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try. In ad­di­tion to seiz­ing arms and am­mu­ni­tion, mem­bers of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor hope that this Task Force would con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the re­duc­tion of the preva­lence of il­lic­it trade in items such as al­co­hol, clean­ing items, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and to­bac­co prod­ucts,” the re­lease stat­ed.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, these seizures jus­ti­fy the need for the Gov­ern­ment (to con­tin­ue) to as­sid­u­ous­ly tack­le il­lic­it trade.”

The TTMA added that suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of the per­sons in­volved can act as a de­ter­rent to the im­porters (con­signees) and the fa­cil­i­ta­tors of il­lic­it trade.

“The suc­cess­ful seizure by Cus­toms, in ad­di­tion to a ro­bust in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the TTPS, and a well-ex­e­cut­ed pros­e­cu­tion by the Gov­ern­ment, all con­tribute to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing il­lic­it trade,” the re­lease stat­ed.