Gail Alexan­der

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­leged that Gov­ern­ment is “il­le­gal­ly spy­ing”—with cer­tain po­lice of­fi­cers’ help—on mem­bers of the me­dia, busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, ju­di­cia­ry, State boards, PNM MPs and sen­a­tors, some PN­Mites’ spous­es, trade unions and the Op­po­si­tion.

Call­ing for an­swers at UNC Fo­rum on Mon­day night, she queried why the Par­lia­ment wasn’t be­ing con­vened, since, “We need an­swers on this il­le­gal spy­ing.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she’d warned pre­vi­ous­ly about Gov­ern­ment ac­quir­ing the Is­raeli Pe­ga­sus soft­ware pro­gramme to hack in­to cit­i­zens’ What­sApp com­mu­ni­ca­tion and oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

“I can con­firm that Gov­ern­ment did, in fact, ac­quire this soft­ware and they’ve been il­le­gal­ly spy­ing on cit­i­zens—var­i­ous so­cial me­dia plat­forms, What­sApps, e-mails etc,” she claimed.

“A whis­tle-blow­er has pro­vid­ed me with in­for­ma­tion on this wide­spread elec­tron­ic spy­ing. I al­so got the names of peo­ple who’ve been spied up­on. We’ve been alert­ing peo­ple pri­vate­ly be­cause of safe­ty con­cerns.”

She al­leged, “The list of peo­ple be­ing spied on in­clude mem­bers of the me­dia, re­porters and ed­i­tors, mem­bers of the se­nior ju­di­cia­ry and mag­is­trates, State agen­cies – spy­ing on their own board ap­pointees, trade unions, mem­bers of Gov­ern­ment—yes, they’re spy­ing on their own MPs and sen­a­tors—and, of course, they must be spy­ing on the Op­po­si­tion.”

She added: “Al­so be­ing il­le­gal­ly mon­i­tored are mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, the cham­bers of com­merce, lawyers as­so­ci­at­ed with the PNM and UNC and peo­ple in oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties. They’re al­so ac­cess­ing the me­dia, emails and text mes­sages of these per­sons and stor­ing it.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed they ac­cess What­sApp by send­ing some­one a mes­sage and when it’s clicked on, the soft­ware in­fects the phone.

“They can read your What­sApp mes­sages in re­al-time as you’re send­ing and re­ceiv­ing them. There­fore, I’m ad­vis­ing – al­ways delete your What­sApp mes­sages,” she said.

She al­leged, “This is be­ing done with the as­sis­tance of TTPS of­fi­cers.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar fur­ther claimed cer­tain po­lice of­fi­cers “close­ly af­fil­i­at­ed with cer­tain high mem­bers of Gov­ern­ment” are as­sist­ing in this.

“Some of these of­fi­cers were hand-picked and placed in those posts to do this il­le­gal spy­ing.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said when the UNC passed the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Act, on­ly of­fi­cers of cer­tain ranks could in­ter­cept ciom­mu­ni­ca­tion, but in the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, a “po­lice con­sta­ble who is the friend of a min­is­ter has been put to mon­i­tor What­sApp mes­sages.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added: “They’re spy­ing on the mes­sages of their own PNM mem­bers; any­one they think will be a threat to Row­ley’s lead­er­ship is al­so be­ing spied up­on.

“They’re al­so mon­i­tor­ing the phones of the spous­es of cer­tain PNM per­sons. Cer­tain mem­bers of this Gov­ern­ment are suf­fer­ing from para­noia, they’re des­per­ate to find any­one they be­lieve are against them.

“Faris Al-Rawi be­came a vic­tim of this il­le­gal mon­i­tor­ing of What­sApp mes­sages and there are oth­ers who may be­come fu­ture vic­tims of this il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty. Many tell us Row­ley doesn’t have con­trol of his MPs due to in­fight­ing in the PNM—now Gov­ern­ment’s re­sort­ed to Gestapo tac­tics.”

She claimed T&T’s in a dic­ta­tor­ship where ju­di­cial of­fi­cers, busi­ness peo­ple, trade unions and po­lit­i­cal par­ties, “not as­so­ci­at­ed with crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty are be­ing il­le­gal­ly spied on.”

Last week, Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised ques­tions about PNM MP Fos­ter Cum­mings and a com­pa­ny called Pi­cal Ser­vices Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and if that com­pa­ny was a ten­ant/oc­cu­pi­er/own­er of Ca­roni State land.

Last night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar pro­duced video that she al­leged showed trucks on the land with Pi­cal’s lo­go. She asked Cum­mings if a black Range Rover seen on-site was his and what he was do­ing on the com­pound.

She said the Prime Min­is­ter asked for ev­i­dence and she was show­ing this.

She al­so asked if Cum­mings worked with the DSS sou-sou group dur­ing the 2020 elec­tion cam­paign to “in­duce” vot­ers and if his life was threat­ened by those peo­ple he worked with af­ter they lost mon­ey in DSS.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so called for an­swers on al­le­ga­tions that the broth­er of a for­mer min­is­ter had been col­lect­ing mon­ey to “sort out” doc­u­ments to State land.