With re­port­ing by

RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel be­lieve they have un­earthed a plot to free in­mates from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca with the use of ex­plo­sives and firearms, af­ter dis­cov­er­ing the weapons buried closed to the prison Wednes­day night.

Among the things found were C-4 ex­plo­sives and det­o­na­tors.

The dis­cov­ery was made dur­ing an op­er­a­tion by of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Group (NSSOG) just be­fore mid­night.

An emer­gency meet­ing was called yes­ter­day by act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Shamshudeen Mo­hammed to dis­cuss new and im­proved se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures and to help po­lice as­cer­tain those be­hind the crime and those tar­get­ted for es­cape.

Po­lice, led by SORT head, Roger Alexan­der, said they re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that led the of­fi­cers to the prison around 11:40 pm. A search un­cov­ered the weapons, among which were a nine-mil­lime­tre pis­tol loaded with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing 15 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, an AR ri­fle loaded with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing 30 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, a re­volver and five rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, a quan­ti­ty of C4 ex­plo­sives, a length of det­o­na­tor cord, four det­o­na­tors and two walkie-talkies.

The ex­plo­sives were found buried in a gar­den, ac­cord­ing to se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers.

C-4 is com­posed of ex­plo­sives, plas­tic binder, plas­ti­ciz­er to make it mal­leable and usu­al­ly a mark­er or odor­iz­ing tag­gant chem­i­cal.

They say the crude­ly-made ex­plo­sives were found at­tached to yel­low and red wires.

Po­lice be­lieve the items were to be used in a jail­break at­tempt.

They have in­creased se­cu­ri­ty in and around all the pris­ons.

File picture: The hands of an inmate can be seen through the window of a cell at the Maximum Security Prison in Golden Grove, Arouca.

ROBERTO CODALLO

Two se­nior prison sources told Guardian Me­dia that they had been un­of­fi­cial­ly in­formed of an at­tempt­ed jail­break plot by gang mem­bers serv­ing time with­in the prison.

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, Shamshudeen Mo­hammed said the find “on­ly goes to show the length these per­sons will go to desta­bil­is­ing the prison se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem and by ex­ten­sion the coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem.”

“Our task of hous­ing some of the most dan­ger­ous mem­bers of so­ci­ety is of­ten dif­fi­cult and to some, the price for free­dom is nev­er too high,” Mo­hammed said.

He has urged of­fi­cers to ex­er­cise ex­treme vig­i­lance, es­pe­cial­ly when off-du­ty and thanked the po­lice for their ef­forts in en­sur­ing the prison sur­round­ings were safe.

He al­so thanked his of­fi­cers for their con­tin­ued vig­i­lance.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds and Pres­i­dent of the Pris­ons Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion Ceron Richards did not an­swer our calls for com­ment.

If the jail­break at­tempt was suc­cess­ful, it would not have been the first of its kind in re­cent his­to­ry.

On Ju­ly 24, 2015, a jail­break in Port-of-Spain, re­sult­ed in a po­lice of­fi­cer be­ing shot dead as three in­mates used firearms that were smug­gled in­to the prison to shot their way out.

One in­mate was shot dead at a se­cu­ri­ty booth in the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal min­utes lat­er and an­oth­er was killed by crim­i­nals while walk­ing along a street in East Port-of-Spain that night.

The third es­capee gave him­self up.