DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Some ju­di­cial of­fi­cers have been ad­vised to cur­tail their move­ments this week af­ter a so­cial me­dia in­flu­encer made a threat to their safe­ty late last week. 

The pur­port­ed threat came as at­tor­neys from the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Of­fice stayed away from court days af­ter the New Year’s Day hol­i­day as they mourned the death of spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Ran­dall Hec­tor, who was as­sas­si­nat­ed af­ter at­tend­ing church in Port-of-Spain on De­cem­ber 31, 2024. Hec­tor’s fu­ner­al takes place to­day.

The lat­est se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns stemmed from a video post­ed last Fri­day on Tik­Tok by a lo­cal so­cial me­dia in­flu­encer, who de­scribes him­self as a record­ing artiste, singer, and cos­tume de­sign­er and has 5,310 fol­low­ers. 

The man, who was sub­se­quent­ly ar­rest­ed by the po­lice and re­mained in cus­tody up to late yes­ter­day, called his post a pub­lic ser­vice an­nounce­ment be­fore mak­ing a se­ries of threats. 

“Al­lyuh don’t stop killing. This is the war that we need­ed. If the mag­is­trates or judges de­cide to ar­rest me, I want you all to tar­get their fam­i­lies. I want you to tar­get their homes. Ex­e­cute them!” he said. 

The post was liked by 201 users, was shared 787 times and re­ceived 117 com­ments up to late yes­ter­day. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that on Sat­ur­day evening, act­ing Chief Jus­tice Nolan Bereaux and sev­er­al judges, who strict­ly pre­side over crim­i­nal cas­es, and some civ­il judges, who were the sub­ject of pre­vi­ous se­cu­ri­ty threats, were warned of the po­ten­tial threat post­ed on so­cial me­dia the pre­vi­ous day. 

Ju­di­cial sources said that the judges were ini­tial­ly ad­vised to not ven­ture out and to pre­side on cas­es this week us­ing video con­fer­enc­ing. 

On Tues­day, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land con­firmed that Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds met with Ju­di­cia­ry of­fi­cials last week. 

Scot­land re­vealed that he was sched­uled to have a fol­low-up meet­ing with Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie lat­er that af­ter­noon but de­clined to di­vulge the agen­da. 

“So, this was not the first and it will cer­tain­ly not be the last,” Scot­land said, as he not­ed that he planned to meet with Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard.

Ju­di­cial sources said that Archie met with judges, High Court Mas­ters, High Court and Mag­is­tra­cy Reg­is­trars, and mag­is­trates to dis­cuss their se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. 

The meet­ings took place at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain with ju­di­cial of­fi­cers be­ing split in­to mixed batch­es. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that at­ten­dees were told that there was no pos­si­bil­i­ty of se­cu­ri­ty de­tails be­ing pro­vid­ed for all ju­di­cial of­fi­cers. 

They were al­so re­port­ed­ly ad­vised to be aware of their en­vi­ron­ment, use al­ter­na­tive routes and avoid pre­dictable move­ments. 

The stance and ad­vice giv­en were re­port­ed­ly not well re­ceived by some ju­di­cial of­fi­cers. 

“What is the al­ter­na­tive route from San Fer­nan­do to Port-of-Spain?” one judge said in a text mes­sage ex­change. 

“One has to won­der whether the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sive re­fusal to pro­tect us is by de­lib­er­ate de­sign,” an­oth­er judge said. 

“Is the rule of law re­al­ly val­ued in this Re­pub­lic?” she added. 

An­oth­er judge ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that proac­tive mea­sures were not im­ple­ment­ed and se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of se­cu­ri­ty de­tails did not ap­pear to be done. 

“We can’t just wait for some­thing to hap­pen...When the gangs are un­der at­tack and the drug king­pins are hound­ed, the Ju­di­cia­ry is at­tacked,” he said, as he re­ferred to pre­vi­ous vi­o­lent at­tacks and mur­ders of ju­di­cial of­fi­cers in Colom­bia and Mex­i­co.