Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is as­sur­ing state at­tor­neys that the Gov­ern­ment will do all it can to pro­tect them.

The as­sur­ance came dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing in To­ba­go yes­ter­day, even as at­tor­neys at the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) were in a meet­ing with DPP Roger Gas­pard about their safe­ty con­cerns in the wake of the as­sas­si­na­tion of their for­mer col­league Ran­dall Hec­tor, even while there was a State of Emer­gency in full ef­fect.

On Thurs­day, Gas­pard wrote to Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, in­form­ing him that his at­tor­neys were not work­ing for the rest of the week, as they were trau­ma­tised by the mur­der of Hec­tor.

The 43-year-old fa­ther of two was shot in the chest af­ter he left the Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist (SDA) Church, Stan­more Av­enue, Queen’s Park West, on Wednes­day night, where he had de­liv­ered the New Year’s ser­mon. Po­lice said the gun­man shot Hec­tor as he made his way to his ve­hi­cle. He was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he died.

In ex­press­ing their safe­ty con­cerns, young pros­e­cu­tors in par­tic­u­lar not­ed that it ap­peared Hec­tor’s deal­ings with cer­tain high-pro­file cas­es in­volv­ing the crim­i­nal el­e­ment may have been linked to his killing. They point­ed out, though, that on­ly the DPP was af­ford­ed se­cu­ri­ty by the State.

In re­sponse to ques­tions on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Row­ley said crim­i­nals were us­ing fear as their pro­tec­tion know­ing that by at­tack­ing a state at­tor­ney, they may in­tim­i­date oth­ers not to pros­e­cute them.

“I want to say to all the of­fi­cers of state to­day, as Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go will pro­vide all the rea­son­able sup­port, to all the of­fi­cers of State to en­sure that the rule of law pre­vails in Trinidad and To­ba­go. That is the com­mit­ment of the Gov­ern­ment.”

The PM’s as­sur­ance al­so came a day af­ter the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go called for state at­tor­neys to be pro­tect­ed.

Row­ley added yes­ter­day that crim­i­nals showed their lack of con­cern for the law by killing Hec­tor dur­ing a State of Emer­gency. He said it was a tes­ta­ment to the fact that the crim­i­nals did not pay at­ten­tion to the state of the law of the land.

“This is a case of crim­i­nals say­ing that they are not will­ing to have any lawyer stand up in court and put up a case against me. And of course, if you re­move one lawyer, there are oth­er lawyers. That is not what you have ... I am pre­pared to put fear in the hearts of those who may re­place the ones that I have re­moved and there­fore us­ing this fear as pro­tec­tion for the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.”

He ques­tioned whether the coun­try was strong enough to stand against such fear tac­tics, which he said hand­ed vic­to­ry to crim­i­nals. Asked why the SoE was called on De­cem­ber 30 and not soon­er, Row­ley said it was not an easy de­ci­sion, as the op­tion was al­ways avail­able to the Gov­ern­ment. He added the ef­fect of us­ing that op­tion was a ma­jor con­cern to the Gov­ern­ment.

“The es­ca­la­tion and the threat at the time it was used de­mand­ed that we no longer be that cau­tious. So, there is no drag­ging of any feet. It is a de­ci­sion-mak­ing ex­er­cise.”

He said if it was called ear­li­er, the pos­si­bil­i­ty ex­ists that it may have been called again. 

“Be­cause once you have it, there is no guar­an­tee that at the end of it, crim­i­nal in­tent in the minds of peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go will dis­ap­pear yuh know. We have to make sure that the state is in a po­si­tion to dis­charge that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the pop­u­la­tion, which is to pro­vide it with safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, even as crim­i­nal el­e­ments with­in the so­ci­ety keep chang­ing.”

He added that crim­i­nals have been in­creas­ing their weapon­ry and if left unchecked, may even arm them­selves with a bazooka, re­it­er­at­ing that the state must be in a po­si­tion to re­spond.