AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The wife of Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance’s (NTA) Po­lit­i­cal Leader Gary Grif­fith is chal­leng­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) to break her si­lence and re­veal if the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions to her per­son­al mo­bile de­vice.

Speak­ing at the NTA’s meet­ing in Diego Mar­tin on Wednes­day night, Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith said she and her hus­band were re­li­ably in­formed that her cel­lu­lar phone was a tar­get of the TTPS.

“A whistle­blow­er brought to Gary and my at­ten­tion that politi­cians were al­leged­ly in­struct­ing law en­force­ment of­fi­cials to tar­get po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents, us­ing tech­nol­o­gy that was ac­quired to deal with crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty to tar­get crim­i­nals. One of these in­volved wire-tap­ping or in­ter­cep­tion of tele­phone de­vices un­der what is called the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Act. And this es­sen­tial­ly gives the sole au­thor­i­ty to wire-tap your tele­phone and that au­thor­i­ty comes from the Chief of De­fence Staff, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, or the di­rec­tor of an­oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tion. But it can­not be done on whim and fan­cy as there must be jus­ti­fi­able cause, there must be in­tel­li­gence or ev­i­dence to trig­ger such in­ter­cep­tion,” Dy­er-Grif­fith said to those in at­ten­dance.  

She added that giv­en Gary Grif­fith’s ac­ri­mo­nious re­la­tion­ship and his­to­ry with some mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment, it was not sur­pris­ing that he has be­come a ma­jor po­lit­i­cal op­po­nent. How­ev­er, for her to al­so be a tar­get is some­thing the en­tire na­tion should be con­cerned about, she said.

“It means that any­one seen as a po­lit­i­cal op­po­nent of this Gov­ern­ment can have their com­mu­ni­ca­tions on their per­son­al de­vices in­ter­cept­ed via the Gov­ern­ment’s abuse of this process,” she claimed.

Dy­er-Grif­fith re­vealed that she turned to the court in or­der to find out if, in fact, this was true. How­ev­er, the mat­ter was dis­missed.

“Now, what tran­spired a few days ago is that this mat­ter was thrown out of the court. It was dis­missed on the grounds of it be­ing hearsay. Nev­er mind the fact that we pro­vid­ed the al­leged date this was to have tak­en place, nev­er mind the fact we pro­vid­ed phone num­bers where this was al­leged to have tak­en place, nev­er mind the fact that my at­tor­neys have writ­ten to the CoP to ask did ‘you in­ter­cept the tele­phone de­vice of Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith?’ No re­sponse. Up to now it has been ig­nored, up to now there’s no feed­back,” Dy­er-Grif­fith ex­plained.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day with Guardian Me­dia, Dy­er-Grif­fith said they were first made aware of the pos­si­ble phone-tap­ping in mid-2022. She said since then, they have been try­ing to get a re­sponse from the TTPS, par­tic­u­lar­ly from Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob, who was act­ing com­mis­sion­er then, and now from the cur­rent top cop.

Dy­er-Grif­fith said they sought the court’s in­ter­ven­tion but days ago, on Ju­ly 31, her mat­ter was dis­missed.

Her at­tor­ney Mar­tin George al­so re­leased a state­ment yes­ter­day, seek­ing to fur­ther ex­plain what tran­spired.

“We wrote to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice re­quest­ing in­for­ma­tion in­di­cat­ing what had been told to Mrs Grif­fith and ask­ing whether her phone was be­ing tapped or not, we got no re­sponse. We wrote again, but we got no re­sponse again.

“We filed the con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion based on the in­for­ma­tion we had. The judge, how­ev­er, dis­missed it be­cause the State, in­stead of re­spond­ing and in­di­cat­ing whether the phone had been tapped or not, sought to en­gage in shenani­gans and chi­canery and said that ba­si­cal­ly if you can’t pro­vide the ev­i­dence to prove that the phones are tapped then you have no case or claim be­fore us,” George said via a video mes­sage.

He added that the mat­ter was heard be­fore Jus­tice Karen Reid.

George ques­tioned how the court ex­pect­ed a civil­ian to pro­duce such ev­i­dence.

“The ques­tion that aris­es is how would an or­di­nary mem­ber of the pub­lic ob­tain that in­for­ma­tion which is res­i­dent in the bo­som and bel­ly of the Po­lice Ser­vice. Un­der the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act, there are cer­tain re­quire­ments that must be ful­filled be­fore you can en­gage in tap­ping the phone of a cit­i­zen. So there­fore, that in­for­ma­tion must be there with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice, if you tapped the phone and if you didn’t, then the eas­i­est thing would be to come out and say no,” George said.

Dy­er-Grif­fith used the NTA’s po­lit­i­cal plat­form to again ask the CoP if the TTPS is tam­per­ing with her per­son­al mo­bile phone.

“I would like to put it to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, even though this tran­spired un­der for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob, Er­la Christo­pher has to an­swer, I put it to you madam Com­mis­sion­er, ‘Did you in­ter­cept my tele­phone de­vices? Were you aware of the in­ter­cep­tion tak­ing place? Yes or no, it’s a sim­ple an­swer.’”  

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Ja­cob who de­clined to an­swer. Ques­tions were al­so sent to both the CoP and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty how­ev­er, nei­ther of them re­spond­ed.

Mean­while, NTA leader Grif­fith closed the meet­ing by de­fend­ing Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s con­tro­ver­sial “emp­ty the clip” com­ments. Grif­fith claimed that the Prime Min­is­ter and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ob­ject to the pro­posed ‘stand your ground’ laws and le­gal gun own­er­ship be­cause they would rather the scales be tipped in the favour of crim­i­nals.