An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

A San­ta Cruz man al­leged to be a se­nior mem­ber of the Re­sis­tance Gang, who was held in con­nec­tion with a re­port­ed plot to kill two de­fence at­tor­neys, has been charged with traf­fick­ing in firearms.

The 36-year-old ap­peared be­fore High Court Mas­ter Adia Mo­hammed on Tues­day and was re­mand­ed in cus­tody with­out bail.

He was ar­rest­ed on Ju­ly 30 with what po­lice de­scribed as a “so­phis­ti­cat­ed weapon,” which was sup­pos­ed­ly go­ing to be used in the as­sas­si­na­tion of the two lawyers.

The sus­pect has been de­scribed as a “close as­so­ciate” of a se­nior Re­sis­tance mem­ber who is cur­rent­ly in­car­cer­at­ed at Teteron Bar­racks, Ch­aguara­mas.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the sus­pect, who can­not be named at this time as the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­leged plot con­tin­ues, was up­set with the rep­re­sen­ta­tion be­ing met­ed out to the in­mate, who was re­lo­cat­ed from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) on Ju­ly 18, the same day the State of Emer­gency was de­clared.

A se­nior T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) of­fi­cial said, “In­tel­li­gence sug­gests that frus­tra­tions with­in the crim­i­nal net­work, par­tic­u­lar­ly over le­gal set­backs in at­tempts to trans­fer their lead­er­ship from Guan­tanamo Bay and back to the MSP, have es­ca­lat­ed in­to threats against mem­bers of the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty, whom they have termed as jokey lawyers who have the boss­es locked down.”

The of­fi­cial warned that there were now deroga­to­ry ref­er­ences to le­gal coun­sel re­port­ed­ly cir­cu­lat­ing among gang af­fil­i­ates, which “un­der­scored the volatil­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the is­sue, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said, “Law en­force­ment and in­tel­li­gence agen­cies con­tin­ue to treat these threats with the ut­most se­ri­ous­ness.”

He con­firmed the two at­tor­neys had been briefed re­gard­ing the threat; and were ad­vised on what se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures they should adopt.

Gue­var­ro re­as­sured that all nec­es­sary steps were be­ing tak­en to thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter, which, he said, “re­mained an ex­treme­ly sen­si­tive mat­ter which touched on is­sues and process­es re­gard­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.”

The se­nior Re­sis­tance Gang mem­ber was among ten in­mates who were re­moved from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison and trans­ferred to the Teteron Bar­racks, Ch­aguara­mas, in the ear­ly hours of Ju­ly 18 as the SoE went in­to ef­fect.

Last Thurs­day, mur­der ac­cused Earl Richards and Ra­jaee Ali pre­sent­ed one of the at­tor­neys with hand­writ­ten state­ments deny­ing any in­volve­ment in an al­leged plot to desta­bilise the coun­try, or kill the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and oth­er se­nior State of­fi­cials.

The duo ex­pressed fears that they were be­ing set up, amidst con­cerns that se­cu­ri­ty forces were set­ting the stage that could lead to their deaths. They have al­so in­di­cat­ed a will­ing­ness to un­der­go lie de­tec­tor tests to prove their claims.

Gue­var­ro has said that the ini­tial threat that led to the SoE be­ing de­clared has since been neu­tralised.