Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

A man de­scribed as the right-hand man of one of the men be­ing held at the De­fence Force base in Cha­gau­ra­mas was ar­rest­ed with a so­phis­ti­cat­ed weapon, which was to be used in the as­sas­si­na­tion of two de­fence at­tor­neys.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro re­vealed the break­through yes­ter­day. In a voice record­ing sent to Guardian Me­dia, the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er said the de­ten­tion of the sus­pect came hours af­ter his of­fi­cers alert­ed two de­fence at­tor­neys that their lives were in dan­ger.

“I can al­so con­firm for you, based on your ques­tion, that in­tel­li­gence in­di­cat­ed spe­cif­ic threats against two de­fence at­tor­neys. In fact, and I want you to lis­ten very care­ful­ly, one of the in­di­vid­u­als al­leged­ly tasked with ex­e­cut­ing this threat against their own at­tor­neys, who is fight­ing so hard to get them sent back to the MSP, is the right-hand man of one of the clients who they’re fight­ing to get out. I can con­firm to you that he, that right-hand man of their client, is now in cus­tody.”

Gue­var­ro said the man was held with a so­phis­ti­cat­ed weapon.

On Thurs­day, two of the men held at Teteron Bar­racks is­sued hand­writ­ten state­ments deny­ing that they were plot­ting to mur­der the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and oth­er se­nior State of­fi­cials.

Mur­der ac­cused Ra­jaae Ali and Earl Richards said they were fear­ful for their lives and were be­ing set up to cre­ate a sce­nario that could lead to their killing. The men have ex­pressed a will­ing­ness to un­der­go lie de­tec­tor tests to prove their claims.

The men, along with eight oth­ers, were re­moved from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca and sent to Teteron Bar­racks and Staubles Bay hours be­fore the State of Emer­gency was an­nounced.

Gue­var­ro not­ed that the ini­tial threat that led to the SoE on Ju­ly 18 has been neu­tralised.

“Since the start of the SoE, we have made sev­er­al ar­rests and a num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als iden­ti­fied as be­ing part of the threat ma­trix are al­ready be­fore the courts, fac­ing charges, in­clud­ing il­le­gal pos­ses­sion of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion. And this is whilst the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to their role rel­a­tive to the threat is on­go­ing. Our ef­forts have dis­rupt­ed the ini­tial threat, but our mis­sion now ex­tends be­yond con­tain­ment,” he said.

He added that the po­lice con­tin­ue to work “around the clock to dis­man­tle the or­gan­ised crime syn­di­cate.” He said that de­mands pre­ci­sion. Gue­var­ro said that while it will not be pru­dent to dis­close the iden­ti­ties or quan­ti­ty of in­di­vid­u­als who were marked as tar­gets, he as­sured ju­di­cial of­fi­cers and the pub­lic that na­tion­al safe­ty, and the in­tegri­ty of the jus­tice sys­tem re­mains para­mount.

Gue­var­ro al­so ad­dressed the con­cerns of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty about the num­ber of fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings since the SoE.

Last week, PCA di­rec­tor David West said his or­gan­i­sa­tion was con­cerned about the po­lice shoot­ings and was mon­i­tor­ing them. At the time, there were five fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings, and one more was record­ed af­ter.

Fol­low­ing his pro­nounce­ment, there were calls for West to be re­moved as the head of the PCA. He dis­missed those calls and hailed the in­de­pen­dence of the PCA.

But yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro said the PCA should al­so pay at­ten­tion to the coun­try’s mur­der rate and the loss of life.

“I ac­knowl­edge the con­cerns raised by the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty. At the same time, I find it note­wor­thy that when 625 cit­i­zens were killed in 2024, many at the hands of crim­i­nal el­e­ments, the PCA’s voice was no­tably ab­sent. We re­main com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, and every po­lice-in­volved death is sub­ject to in­ter­nal and in­de­pen­dent scruti­ny. But, let me be clear, pel­lu­cid­ly clear, my pri­or­i­ty is the safe­ty of all cit­i­zens and the of­fi­cers sworn to pro­tect them. The TTPS will con­tin­ue to act with­in the law to re­store or­der and pub­lic con­fi­dence,” the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er said.