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.”