An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

In­mates Ra­jaae Ali and Earl Richards, two of ten in­mates cur­rent­ly in­car­cer­at­ed at the Teteron Bar­racks in Ch­aguara­mas, yes­ter­day hand­ed over hand­writ­ten state­ments, in which they swore they were not in­volved in any plot to desta­bilise the coun­try or to kill state of­fi­cials.

The two are al­so fear­ful for their lives, say­ing they were be­ing set up to cre­ate a sce­nario that could lead to their killing. The men have ex­pressed a will­ing­ness to un­der­go lie de­tec­tor tests to prove their claims.

The men pre­sent­ed the doc­u­ments to one of the at­tor­neys against whom a death threat was al­so is­sued late on Wednes­day.

In one of the state­ments giv­en to the at­tor­ney dur­ing a vis­it to the Teteron Bar­racks yes­ter­day, mur­der ac­cused Richards swore he was be­ing set up and that the mis­in­for­ma­tion be­ing re­leased in the pub­lic do­main was meant to fur­ther tar­nish his char­ac­ter and ma­lign him in the eyes of his at­tor­ney.

An ex­cerpt read, “I do not want to kill any lawyer, any judge or DPP. They shall be the peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for my free­dom. I do not mind tak­ing a lie de­tec­tor about these is­sues. Some­one is set­ting us up with­out a string of ev­i­dence.”

Mur­der ac­cused Ali al­so wrote a sim­i­lar state­ment, say­ing, “I do not want to kill the DPP. I want my day in court with him. I do not want to kill any lawyer. It won’t ben­e­fit me in any way.”

He too said he would un­der­go a lie de­tec­tor test to prove his claims.

Ali main­tained, “I be­lieve they are try­ing to cre­ate a pic­ture of me be­ing pub­lic en­e­my No 1, to in­flu­ence the pub­lic per­cep­tion of me in a neg­a­tive way.”

Mean­while, con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro con­firmed that “in­tel­li­gence re­ports have ver­i­fied threats made by in­car­cer­at­ed in­di­vid­u­als against two crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­neys.” He as­sured the mat­ters were be­ing ac­tive­ly ad­dressed and the re­quired du­ty of care no­ti­fi­ca­tions had been is­sued to the rel­e­vant par­ties.

The two at­tor­neys con­firmed they had been ap­prised of the lat­est de­vel­op­ment, which they ad­mit­ted was “trou­bling.”

Mean­while, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der is not sym­pa­thet­ic to the re­ports that lawyers were now be­ing threat­ened.

Speak­ing with re­porters at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, he ad­vised le­gal lu­mi­nar­ies to think care­ful­ly be­fore rep­re­sent­ing cer­tain clients.

Asked if se­cu­ri­ty had been pro­vid­ed for the at­tor­neys in light of the threats, Alexan­der said, “Per­sons al­so need to adapt se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures to pro­tect them­selves.”

A se­nior in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cial speak­ing un­der the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty al­so con­firmed the threats, say­ing, “The in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion was linked to a male rel­a­tive of one of the men cur­rent­ly housed at Teteron who was him­self in­car­cer­at­ed at the MSP.”

Guardian Me­dia fur­ther learned that this lat­est threat “em­anat­ed from out­side of the prison, as the gang mem­bers on the out­side were up­set over the fail­ure of the two lawyers to se­cure the re­turn of their lead­ers to what is now be­ing re­ferred to as the’ Crim­i­nal Com­mand Cen­tre’.”

Speak­ing specif­i­cal­ly about the threats to lawyers, Alexan­der said, “Some of the per­sons in­volved are say­ing now that if the lawyers are not see­ing about them in a par­tic­u­lar way, the lawyers has be­come ab­solute.”

He warned, “They no longer im­por­tant to them, so per­sons now have to re­con­sid­er and think. They are say­ing these per­sons are no longer im­por­tant to them, so they want to make a de­ci­sion...for them.”

The min­is­ter end­ed with a per­plex­ing metaphor, as he said, “Some at­tor­neys are tak­ing milk from their own cow and drink­ing it. It is not for sale some­times but they are tak­ing milk from the cow and drink­ing it, so they are talk­ing on be­half of them­selves and some­times not even on be­half of their client.”

Army: 3 drones de­tect­ed

at Ch­aguara­mas

The T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) yes­ter­day con­firmed that three drones have so far been in­ter­cept­ed in the air­space over its Ch­agua­naras fa­cil­i­ties.

“Dur­ing rou­tine sur­veil­lance on Thurs­day, 24th Ju­ly, 2025 and Fri­day, 25th Ju­ly, 2025, two Un­manned Aer­i­al Ve­hi­cles (UAVs or Drones) were ob­served by the TTDF fly­ing in the aer­i­al space be­tween Staubles Bay and Teteron Bar­racks, Ch­aguara­mas,” the TTDF said in a state­ment.

“On Sat­ur­day, 26th Ju­ly, 2025, dur­ing rou­tine sur­veil­lance, a third UAV was ob­served fly­ing with­in the aer­i­al space of Teteron Bar­racks.”

The TTDF as­sured they had “close­ly mon­i­tored these UAVs and took ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion.”

It ad­vised the pub­lic that fly­ing UAVs in the Ch­aguara­mas penin­su­la was pro­hib­it­ed un­der Reg­u­la­tion 19 of the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Reg­u­la­tions.

Asked about ear­li­er re­ports that drones had been de­tect­ed fly­ing over the mil­i­tary base, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Alexan­der said, “If it was done, it was ad­dressed.”

Asked if they were op­er­at­ed by civil­ians, he quipped, “The mil­i­tary did not put it up so it would have to be a civil­ian.”