Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley wants an­swers from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice on the Brent Thomas af­fair.

In fact, Row­ley says he has had grave con­cern about all as­pects of the Thomas mat­ter and he has re­quest­ed Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds to get a full ex­pla­na­tion from Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher on how Thomas came to be re­moved from Bar­ba­dos and brought back to Trinidad for a case.

That’s ex­pect­ed short­ly.

Row­ley con­firmed this in a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing queries to him on the re­cent judg­ment in the Thomas is­sue and sub­se­quent de­vel­op­ments.

The Prime Min­is­ter has al­so made it clear the Gov­ern­ment was not in­volved in the mat­ter.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, who’s al­so ac­knowl­edged that the find­ings of the judge in Thomas’ mat­ter raise se­ri­ous con­cerns on the “con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­pri­ety of ac­tions” of the TTPS, has al­so sought to be ful­ly briefed on the facts.

Both T&T’s Gov­ern­ment and the Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment have now called for re­ports on the Thomas mat­ter from each is­land’s re­spec­tive po­lice ser­vices.

The is­sue con­cern­ing Thomas, an au­tho­rised firearms deal­er, cat­a­pult­ed the law en­force­ment agen­cies of T&T and Bar­ba­dos in­to the spot­light fol­low­ing last week’s sting­ing judg­ment by Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad.

Among find­ings, Ram­per­sad stat­ed that Thomas, who was at the cen­tre of po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions in mid-2022, was “un­law­ful­ly ab­duct­ed” last Oc­to­ber when T&T po­lice of­fi­cers, with Bar­ba­dos po­lice of­fi­cers’ as­sis­tance, de­tained Thomas while he tran­sit­ed through Bar­ba­dos en route to Mi­a­mi.

Ram­per­sad, who sug­gest­ed the man­ner of the de­ten­tion showed an at­tempt to by­pass the law­ful pro­ce­dure of re­quest­ing Thomas’ ex­tra­di­tion, halt­ed the crim­i­nal case against him.

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty is now in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter.

On Mon­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Hinds de­nied that he or any oth­er Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial was in­volved in the mat­ter. Hinds said AG Ar­mour and CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher will in­ves­ti­gate the is­sues which the judge raised.

On Tues­day and yes­ter­day, Bar­ba­dos news­pa­pers car­ried ar­ti­cles on the mat­ter, in­clud­ing the judge’s com­ments. On Tues­day, Bar­ba­dos To­day’s head­line asked “Po­lice Ab­duc­tion?”, while the Mid­week Na­tion blared “Judge Slams Ba­jan Cops over Ab­duc­tion.”

Bar­ba­dos At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Dale Mar­shall was quot­ed as say­ing he had no pri­or knowl­edge of the is­sue and has asked Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Richard Boyce for a re­port.

Row­ley, who is Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil head, was asked by Guardian Me­dia, via What­sApp, to re­spond on the is­sue, in­clud­ing if he’d called for a re­port on this from the TTPS and CoP and if there was any com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Bar­ba­dos on the mat­ter.

In his What­sApp re­ply, Row­ley stat­ed: “This whole mat­ter, be­ing seen by me for the first time in the me­dia and it be­ing a whol­ly po­lice ex­er­cise, which, in the process, rapid­ly be­came a sen­si­tive court mat­ter, I have had grave con­cerns about all as­pects of it but have not spo­ken pub­licly on it for ob­vi­ous rea­sons.

“How­ev­er, a lim­it­ed Gov­ern­ment re­sponse as known to us, was ap­pro­pri­ate­ly made by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, who de­scribed very clear­ly, the Gov­ern­ment’s lack of in­volve­ment in any as­pect of this piece of on­go­ing po­lice work.

“As a fol­low-up, I have re­quest­ed of the Min­is­ter to get from the Com­mis­sion­er a full ex­pla­na­tion as war­rant­ed by the cir­cum­stances and sit­u­a­tion, with­out in any way get­ting in­volved in the ac­tu­al po­lice work.”

The PM added, “I ex­pect to have that short­ly and may be able to bet­ter re­spond to fur­ther en­quiries.”

AG wants an­swers too....

Queries to CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher and oth­er po­lice of­fi­cials re­ceived no re­ply up to 8 pm.

Nor could it be con­firmed if Cari­com’s Ar­rest War­rant Treaty - which by­pass­es com­plex­i­ty, costs and de­lay po­ten­tial” of ex­tra­di­tion - played any part in Thomas’s is­sue.

T&T signed on­to the Treaty in 2018.

The ob­ject of the treaty was to es­tab­lish, with­in the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty, a sys­tem of ar­rest and sur­ren­der of re­quest­ed per­sons for the pur­pos­es of (a) con­duct­ing in re­spect of those per­sons a crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion for an ap­plic­a­ble of­fence or; (b) ex­e­cut­ing a cus­to­di­al sen­tence or greater pun­ish­ment where the re­quest­ed per­sons have fled from jus­tice af­ter be­ing con­vict­ed or sen­tenced for an ap­plic­a­ble of­fence.

On Mon­day, the T&T Guardian sought word from AG Ar­mour on the judg­ment and ap­peal.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Ar­mour said, “As At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, I ac­knowl­edge that the find­ings of the judge in that mat­ter raise se­ri­ous con­cerns as to the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­pri­ety of ac­tions of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

“In­so­far as I am re­spon­si­ble for the de­fence of con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­pri­ety of agents of the State and, on the mat­ter hav­ing been brought to my at­ten­tion, I have asked to be ful­ly briefed on the facts of this mat­ter and, re­quest­ed ur­gent ad­vice on the mer­its of an ap­peal from Lead Coun­sel rep­re­sent­ing the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.”

T&T’s For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­istry sources in­di­cat­ed there had been no gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tion in­volv­ing the re­spec­tive For­eign Af­fairs Min­istries “at any point” in the arrange­ments in­volv­ing Thomas.

Bar­ba­dos treat­ing

mat­ter with ur­gency

Fol­low­ing emailed queries to Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley for her views on the is­sue and oth­er as­pects, Di­rec­tor of Cit­i­zen En­gage­ment and Me­dia Re­la­tions at the Bar­ba­dos PM’s of­fice, Roy Mor­ris, said Mot­t­ley would not com­ment on the mat­ter at this point, since Bar­ba­dos AG Mar­shall, who had re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for that is­land’s po­lice ser­vice, had asked Bar­ba­dos’s Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Boyce for a re­port.

Un­til that’s in hand, they wouldn’t be able to make ad­di­tion­al com­ment, as “...Peo­ple will be talk­ing on what they don’t know,” Mor­ris not­ed.

Mor­ris said there was no dead­line for the po­lice re­port as far as he was aware.

“But the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has said he wants the mat­ter treat­ed with ur­gency,” he said.

Bar­ba­dos’ CoP, Boyce, mean­while told the T&T Guardian, “The mat­ter is cer­tain­ly be­ing worked on. But I’m con­strained to give de­tails as I have to speak to my prin­ci­pals first, as you’d ap­pre­ci­ate.”

T&T, B’dos, Er­la must an­swer—Wade Mark

UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark has called for an­swers on the Brent Thomas is­sue from Gov­ern­ment and po­lice of­fi­cials of both T&T and Bar­ba­dos - in­clud­ing TT Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

“(T&T) Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, why are you silent on this? We de­mand she speaks up and takes ac­tion against those rogue TTPS of­fi­cers who did this act!” Mark said at yes­ter­day’s UNC me­dia brief­ing in Port-of-Spain.

He claimed there was a “ter­ror at­tack” on firearms deal­er Thomas, who was “....kid­napped, ab­duct­ed and forcibly re­turned to T&T with the full co-op­er­a­tion of the Bar­ba­dos po­lice, where the Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter is in charge of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.”

Mark claimed peo­ple were “ques­tion­ing if there was prime min­is­te­r­i­al ter­ror­ism” in the re­gion. Cit­ing re­cent Bar­ba­dos head­lines on the mat­ter, Mark said Bar­ba­di­ans are con­cerned about the “ab­duc­tion” with Bar­ba­dos po­lice sup­port.

Mark claimed there was si­lence on this “ug­ly, dan­ger­ous in­ci­dent” from Bar­ba­dos’s Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, T&T’s Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter “who ap­peared to wash his hands of it,” from T&T’s For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter, T&T’s Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and from the Prime Min­is­ters of T&T and Bar­ba­dos.

Mark said, “There’s no time for fur­ther si­lence on this mat­ter! There must be a full state­ment from the Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos. The Prime Min­is­ter has to speak up!”

Call­ing on T&T Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to speak, Mark claimed no De­fence Force air­craft could have left T&T head­ing to Bar­ba­dos with­out T&T’s PM and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter know­ing.

Mark ques­tioned if po­lice were “tak­ing in­struc­tions” from Row­ley and not the Com­mis­sion­er, if there was a “se­cret Mon­goose gang” and how of­fi­cers in the is­sue were still on the job.

He called on T&T’s At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to ac­count, as the Bar­ba­dos AG had spo­ken, adding that T&T’s For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry al­so needs to speak. He said the UNC will be se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing writ­ing the UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al seek­ing in­ter­ven­tion and alert­ing the Eu­ro­pean Union and US gov­ern­ment on the mat­ter.