RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Oropouche MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal plans to grill Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher on the Brent Thomas fi­as­co when she ap­pears be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing this week.

Mooni­lal made the com­ment while point­ing out that the Thomas scan­dal war­rants a full pub­lic en­quiry from Cari­com, as it demon­strates a wan­ton dis­re­gard for the rule of law by high-pro­file arms of law en­force­ment.

Mooni­lal said he was look­ing for­ward to ques­tion­ing the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er on Thomas’ al­leged ab­duc­tion.

The deputy UNC leader said he in­tend­ed to find out di­rect­ly who au­tho­rised a Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices air­craft to land in T&T, even though T&T is not a sig­na­to­ry to the RSS. The Cari­com mem­ber states form­ing the RSS are Bar­ba­dos, An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, Do­mini­ca, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

Of­fi­cers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice used a RSS air­craft to re­turn Thomas to T&T last year, af­ter he was de­tained in Bar­ba­dos while in tran­sit to Mi­a­mi and re­turned home.

Dr Mooni­lal ex­plained that for an RSS air­craft to be used, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty must have re­quest­ed this be­cause an RSS air­craft can­not come in­to T&T’s sov­er­eign space with­out per­mis­sion.

“We are hop­ing that the Com­mis­sion­er will deal with that. The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is ap­pear­ing on the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee next week (this week) and I in­tend to pose that ques­tion to her as to who au­tho­rised the po­lice to trav­el on RSS air­craft,” Mooni­lal con­tend­ed.

He al­so said the Bar­ba­di­an At­tor­ney Gen­er­al “fell short in giv­ing a prop­er open and frank ex­pla­na­tion as to what tran­spired.”

“It is not good enough to say the po­lice fell short. What hap­pened is the po­lice broke the law and you ei­ther have to up­hold the law or break the law,” Mooni­lal added in ref­er­ence to Bar­ba­dos AG Dale Mar­shall’s state­ment in Par­lia­ment last week on the mat­ter.

Asked whether the Op­po­si­tion had re­ceived any cor­re­spon­dence from Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, Dr Mooni­lal said: “I would as­sume when the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al spoke it was with the knowl­edge and con­sent of the Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos.”

How­ev­er, say­ing fur­ther en­quiry is need­ed, Dr Mooni­lal added, “That is why I sup­port the ap­proach of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to write to the Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos to call for a full pub­lic en­quiry to the scan­dal.”