Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

A man who was in­stru­men­tal in tip­ping off lo­cal law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties about some of the largest firearms and drug ship­ments that en­tered this coun­try over the last year and were part of a ma­jor transat­lantic crim­i­nal pipeline was shot and killed in ear­ly Oc­to­ber in the PriceS­mart car park in Mau­si­ca Road D’abadie.

A num­ber of po­lice in­tel­li­gence, cus­toms, and oth­er law en­force­ment sources con­firmed that 41-year-old Mark Ren­ni Mo­hammed who hus­tled as a clerk clear­ing var­i­ous bar­rels at bond ware­hous­es across the coun­try had ties to un­der­world sources in the Unit­ed States and in T&T, which helped with the il­lic­it flow of con­tra­band in­to the coun­try.

But Mo­hammed’s il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties were stopped in their tracks in Feb­ru­ary of this year af­ter of­fi­cers of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion ex­am­ined a bar­rel con­tain­ing food­stuff at the Caribbean Air­lines’ (CAL) bond and dis­cov­ered $339,592.00 worth of mar­i­jua­na.

“We re­alised he was act­ing ner­vous and when we checked the mac­a­roni box­es they were not sealed prop­er­ly and seemed to be a bit heav­ier than usu­al and the corn­flakes box­es al­so seemed to be sus­pect and up­on check­ing them we found the mar­i­jua­na,” a se­nior cus­toms source re­vealed who had in­side knowl­edge about the bust.

Mo­hammed turns in­for­mant

The se­nior cus­toms source said that af­ter ques­tion­ing Mo­hammed who was lat­er hand­ed over to the po­lice he de­cid­ed to turn in­for­mant and as­sist the law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties with any in­for­ma­tion about fu­ture con­tra­band ship­ments com­ing from the Unit­ed States.

In ex­change, he was not charged for the ship­ment dis­cov­ered at the CAL bond.

Sources al­so told the Sun­day Guardian that Mo­hammed not on­ly give in­sid­er in­for­ma­tion about the ship­ping of the con­tra­band to Trinidad but al­so give valu­able in­for­ma­tion per­ti­nent to crim­i­nals and oth­er law en­force­ment per­son­nel who aid­ed and abet­ted the process.

Last week, an ex­clu­sive Sun­day Guardian sto­ry high­light­ed the al­leged in­volve­ment of Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers as well as oth­er law en­force­ment of­fi­cers who were com­plic­it in the il­lic­it trade and who al­leged­ly re­ceived mon­e­tary bribes to al­low the bar­rels filled with guns and am­mu­ni­tion and drugs to slip in­to the coun­try.

An in­tel­li­gence source said had it not been for Mo­hammed the large cache of guns and am­mu­ni­tion that the crim­i­nals at­tempt­ed to pass through the Med­way bond ware­house in Cen­tral Trinidad on at least two oc­ca­sions would have gone through.

“To­geth­er with the in­tel­li­gence we had got­ten and the in­for­ma­tion Mo­hammed gave us we were suc­cess­ful­ly able to make those busts.”

On March 8, 2022, po­lice re­cov­ered 17 high-pow­ered ri­fles, two Glock 19 pis­tols, and a quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion at the Med­way bond ware­house. In late April the same ware­house was again bust­ed when of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) dis­cov­ered firearms, am­mu­ni­tion, and cig­a­rettes hid­den in a wash­ing ma­chine and dry­er at the bond.

And on­ly quite re­cent­ly in late Oc­to­ber, this same ware­house was bust­ed when po­lice seized 16 high-pow­ered ri­fles, five pis­tols and sev­er­al thou­sand rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, and $2.6 mil­lion worth of mar­i­jua­na.

Mo­hammed was shot dead on Oc­to­ber 5, just a few weeks be­fore this lat­est ship­ment was in­ter­cept­ed by law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties. It was quite pos­si­ble sources say he al­so gave the “tip-off” for that bust ahead of time.

Mo­hammed’s hit called from out­side

A high­ly clas­si­fied in­tel­li­gence re­port that the Guardian Me­dia saw in­di­cat­ed that the day Mo­hammed was shot and killed he was lat­er re­lieved of some US$30,000 by his killers.

The re­port added, “In­for­ma­tion al­so sug­gests the hit was car­ried out by ex-law en­force­ment.”

Sev­er­al law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties be­lieve that word had got­ten out that Mo­hammed had be­come a po­lice in­for­mant while still tak­ing monies from for­eign un­der­world fig­ures to fa­cil­i­tate their ship­ments.

The for­eign un­der­world fig­ures who had been mon­i­tor­ing him with the help of per­sons here, lat­er co­or­di­nat­ed a meet­ing with Mo­hammed at the PriceS­mart car park to put him in place to be killed.

The in­tel­li­gence re­port cor­rob­o­rat­ed this, stat­ing Mo­hammed “was set up due to evad­ing for­eign un­der­world in­di­vid­u­als for the loss of goods and firearms which in­clud­ed high pow­ered as­sault ri­fles and pis­tols as­sort­ed rounds of am­mu­ni­tion,” fol­low­ing the dis­cov­er­ies made by law en­force­ment with the help of US au­thor­i­ties that oc­curred over the year.

New York gun con­nec­tions

An­oth­er po­lice in­tel­li­gence source told the Guardian Me­dia that Mo­hammed al­so had con­nec­tions in New York and “used a par­tic­u­lar ship­ping agency, whether it was pri­vate or com­mer­cial to ship the bar­rels down. He had some rel­a­tives there who had un­der­world con­nec­tions who would al­so en­sure the con­tra­band was shipped from there and it was quite like­ly they had an in­side con­tact at that agency.”

An­oth­er se­nior cus­toms source aware of the transat­lantic pipeline that Mo­hammed was part of said, “These peo­ple would get per­sons to go to the gun stores and buy the weapons for them le­git­i­mate­ly in many cas­es be­cause they could not, and then they would co-or­di­nate the ship­ments.”

Lo­cal law en­force­ment agen­cies have been work­ing close­ly with the Bu­reau of Al­co­hol, To­bac­co Firearms and Ex­plo­sives (ATF) in the US to clamp down on this gun trade.