SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

“To­tal­ly out of line, out of place, and out of turn!” That is how for­mer di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Prof Andy Knight is view­ing Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­ci­sion to write Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos Mia Mot­t­ley seek­ing a full in­quiry in­to the “ab­duc­tion” of T&T arms deal­er Brent Thomas fol­low­ing his ar­rest in Bar­ba­dos last Oc­to­ber.

Knight said he had to agree with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in re­sponse to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s let­ter on Wednes­day that there is on­ly one gov­ern­ment in T&T at a time.

“So Per­sad-Bisses­sar was com­plete­ly out of place in jump­ing in­to this mat­ter. Her mes­sage to Mia Mot­t­ley was un­called for. I think that Per­sad-Bisses­sar was to­tal­ly out of line in get­ting in­to an is­sue in­volv­ing the sov­er­eign states of Bar­ba­dos and Trinidad and To­ba­go. That is the role of the PM, not the Op­po­si­tion Leader. I think Mia Mot­t­ley un­der­stands that Per­sad-Bisses­sar was just try­ing to claim rel­e­vance and that she spoke out of turn.”

Knight be­lieves that the T&T Gov­ern­ment has han­dled the sit­u­a­tion prop­er­ly so far.

“Re­spond­ing to the law­suit in the way that the Gov­ern­ment did, for in­stance, was the ap­pro­pri­ate way to deal with this.”

The in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert was weigh­ing in on the on­go­ing saga be­tween T&T and Bar­ba­dos on Thomas’ mat­ter.

Shar­ing his views dur­ing an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian on Fri­day, Knight said the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Bar­ba­dos, Dale Mar­shall, pro­vid­ed the facts of what hap­pened in Thomas’ af­fair when he spoke in the Bar­ba­di­an Par­lia­ment on Tues­day.

Mar­shall made it clear that his Gov­ern­ment was not to be blamed for the high­ly con­tro­ver­sial ar­rest and sub­se­quent trans­fer of Thomas to T&T.

He said nei­ther Row­ley nor Mot­t­ley was in­formed or aware of Thomas’ trans­fer to T&T from Bar­ba­dos and that the mat­ter was ful­ly co­or­di­nat­ed by Cari­com’s Im­ple­ment­ing Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (IM­PACS).

Knight said Mar­shall did a great job of clear­ly lay­ing out the facts of the mat­ter and re­veal­ing that the Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force was re­spond­ing to an alert from the Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tem (the RSS), the IM­PACS, and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in Bar­ba­dos that Thomas was a per­son of in­ter­est to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

“So, I think my ini­tial state­ment to re­porters about wait­ing un­til we know the facts about this po­lice mat­ter was a ra­tio­nal and sen­si­ble state­ment to make un­der the cir­cum­stances. It al­so un­der­lines the fact that Per­sad-Bisses­sar jumped the gun and un­wise­ly mir­rored the un­for­tu­nate ter­mi­nol­o­gy used by T&T Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad that the ar­rest and de­ten­tion of Brent Thomas was an ‘ab­duc­tion’.”

Knight said the Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force was abid­ing by the Ex­tra­di­tion Act, Chap­ter 189 of the Laws of Bar­ba­dos, in turn­ing over Thomas to T&T po­lice au­thor­i­ties.

“There was ab­solute­ly noth­ing the Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force did that was il­le­gal. This was not a kid­nap­ping nor was it an ab­duc­tion. The ac­tion tak­en in this case by the Bar­ba­dos po­lice was in ac­cor­dance with the re­gion­al Cari­com Ar­rest War­rant Treaty which was agreed to and adopt­ed by Cari­com Heads in Ju­ly 2017. Bar­ba­dos in fact rat­i­fied that treaty in April 2018.”

On whether Bar­ba­dos fol­lowed es­tab­lished ex­tra­di­tion pro­ce­dures, Knight said, “One can make the ar­gu­ment that it might have been more prop­er to fol­low the ex­tra­di­tion pro­ce­dure that has been es­tab­lished be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Bar­ba­dos. But we don’t yet know enough about why the de­ten­tion of Brent Thomas was con­sid­ered ur­gent enough to do what the po­lice forces of the two coun­tries did.”