Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran be­lieves that the sack­ing of Arthur Bar­ring­ton as leader of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) needs to be ex­plained to the pub­lic by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, De­osaran said the sud­den re­moval may be po­lit­i­cal and like the fir­ing of his pre­de­ces­sor Ma­jor Roger Best, a rea­son should be giv­en.

“At that lev­el, if you have to move such peo­ple, there should be ex­pla­na­tions. I would think fair­ness should dom­i­nate such ac­tiv­i­ties. Fair­ness in­cludes due process,” De­osaran said.

“So, the pub­lic might want to ask, well, what makes Bar­ring­ton un­suit­able? Was it just a tem­po­rary ap­point­ment and for how long? And if there was some in­ter­rup­tion in the ap­point­ment for some rea­son, well, we should hear the rea­son.”

He added: “Whether it’s black and white or what­ev­er, every­body’s en­ti­tled to due process. So, if there’s a rea­son for re­mov­ing Bar­ring­ton af­ter we have had Mr Best, I think the pub­lic will be sat­is­fied with some ex­pla­na­tion in such mat­ters, at such lev­els.”

Al­so com­ment­ing on the ter­mi­na­tion was at­tor­ney Mar­tin George, who said the coun­try’s pre­mier in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing agency has be­come like a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball.

“Some­times, it’s been the type of po­lit­i­cal foot­ball which has blown up in the faces of some of the play­ers. It’s al­ways been that kind of hot pota­to. But the re­al­i­ty is, there re­al­ly ought to be some sort of ma­jor con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form where­by, par­tic­u­lar­ly in things like na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and the state ap­pa­ra­tus un­der the aegis of the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, there ought to be some gen­er­alised di­rec­tion and plan­ning, be­cause what some­times hap­pens is el­e­ments of po­lit­i­cal spite and vic­tim­i­sa­tion.”

A me­dia re­lease is­sued from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice on Sat­ur­day stat­ed that Cab­i­net had tak­en the de­ci­sion to re­voke his ap­point­ment.

Bar­ring­ton, a for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer, took up du­ties on April 1. He was ap­point­ed by for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who said Bar­ring­ton would pro­vide much-need­ed sta­bil­i­ty in the SSA.

Bar­ring­ton re­placed for­mer am­bas­sador An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer, who was brought in from the Unit­ed States last year to clean up the SSA fol­low­ing the dis­missal of Ma­jor Roger Best.

Best, who was seen at a UNC ral­ly in the lead-up to the Gen­er­al Elec­tion, was fired af­ter be­ing de­tained and ques­tioned by the po­lice in con­nec­tion with a probe in­to the pro­cure­ment of two sniper ri­fles.

He was nev­er charged for any of­fence but, three SSA em­ploy­ees—Pas­tor Ian Brown, Sgt Sher­win Wal­dron and Su­san Portell-Grif­fith—were charged for the unau­tho­rised trans­fer of pro­hib­it­ed firearms from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to the SSA. Charges against the trio were dis­missed ear­li­er this year.