JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

A prison of­fi­cer with al­leged links to mur­der ac­cused Ra­jaee Ali, is one of the lat­est peo­ple to have a de­ten­tion or­der is­sued against him un­der the State of Emer­gency.

Ac­cord­ing to the de­ten­tion or­der, which was gazetted yes­ter­day and signed on Au­gust 18, Garth Gua­da, of Mal­abar, Ari­ma, is al­leged­ly an as­so­ciate of the Rad­i­cal Is­lam­ic Crim­i­nal Gang and oth­er gangs. The Rad­i­cal Is­lam­ic Crim­i­nal Gang, ac­cord­ing to or­der, is led by Ali.

The or­der against Gua­da stat­ed: “He has been con­firmed to be pro­vid­ing sup­port to oth­er gang lead­ers and mem­bers who are in­car­cer­at­ed in fur­ther­ance of their par­tic­i­pa­tion in, in­volve­ment in or com­mis­sion of vi­o­lent gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing the im­mi­nent­ly planned killing of pub­lic of­fi­cials in pub­lic spaces us­ing high-pow­ered ri­fles.”

The or­der said as a prison su­per­vi­sor, Gua­da “re­peat­ed­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed the breach of prison se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures for the ben­e­fit of the gang mem­bers and has been try­ing to en­gage in fur­ther breach­es at their cur­rent place of in­car­cer­a­tion (Teteron Bar­racks).”

Ac­cord­ing to the de­ten­tion or­der against Ali, he is ac­cused of ac­cess­ing “pro­hib­it­ed ar­ti­cles” while at the De­fence Force bases in Ch­aguara­mas.

Gua­da’s de­ten­tion or­der said this sit­u­a­tion made him a se­ri­ous threat to pub­lic safe­ty and his de­ten­tion at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre nec­es­sary, as he has shown that he has the means and re­sources “to as­sist in­car­cer­at­ed per­sons to en­gage in gang ac­tiv­i­ty de­spite their present in­car­cer­a­tion and is a threat to the safe­ty of the pub­lic.”

Ac­cord­ing to a 2023 Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty Af­fairs MPow­er bio on Gua­da, the 50-year-old fa­ther of one now has 29 years’ ser­vice. The bio said his ex­pe­ri­ence as a prison of­fi­cer, cou­pled with “street sense,” af­ford­ed him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to gain knowl­edge and un­der­stand­ing about the caus­es and ef­fects of crim­i­nal be­hav­iour.

Gua­da is the founder of the male men­tor­ship ini­tia­tive Project Up­lift, a pro­gramme of­fered through the reg­is­tered NGO, Panora­ma Gar­dens Im­prove­ment Com­mit­tee.

“The ini­tia­tive, ac­cord­ing to Mr Gua­da, is one he has strived over the years to cre­ate, hav­ing him­self ex­pe­ri­enced dif­fi­cult years as a male in his youth, com­ing from a sin­gle-par­ent fam­i­ly home. He ad­mits the streets par­tial­ly raised him, ex­pos­ing him to much of what crime and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty was and still is to­day,” the bio said.

Gua­da’s de­ten­tion or­der was made pub­lic hours af­ter act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Hay­den Forde called for all rogue prison of­fi­cers to be ar­rest­ed, charged and con­vict­ed.

Speak­ing at an art ex­hi­bi­tion fea­tur­ing the work of past and cur­rent pris­on­ers at Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, St James, Forde said he is work­ing with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie to ad­just the leg­is­la­tion on who can search of­fi­cers.

“I am ac­tu­al­ly ac­tive­ly in­volved in reach­ing the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to see if our search­ing reg­i­men can move from just su­per­in­ten­dents and above to our su­per­vi­sors, which will in­clude su­per­vi­sors, as­sis­tant su­per­in­ten­dents, su­per­in­ten­dents, se­nior su­per­in­ten­dents. So, there’s a wider catch­ment, a wider pool of of­fi­cers who can con­duct search­es on our of­fi­cers. Be­cause once they are found with any­thing, trust me, I want them placed be­fore a court of law, found guilty, lock them up,” Forde said.

Asked if he felt vin­di­cat­ed that mem­bers of the oth­er arms of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty were now seem­ing­ly in­volved in fa­cil­i­tat­ing in­mates’ il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty, Forde said, “Some pub­lic ser­vants are in­volved in ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties, and the prison ser­vice is not one that we are hid­ing where that is con­cerned. So yes, I’m hap­py be­cause at the end of the day, we have to pro­tect so­ci­ety. And if it means pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­ders (PDOs) for po­lice of­fi­cers, De­fence Force per­son­nel, oth­er agents of the gov­ern­ment, and prison of­fi­cers, es­pe­cial­ly prison of­fi­cers, I do not have a prob­lem with that. I’m quite hap­py where that is con­cerned.”

Asked yes­ter­day about the breach­es at the De­fence Force bases, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, in a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia, said: “I share the con­cerns of the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons. I am on record as stat­ing my po­si­tion since 2013 and en­dured the back­lash for stat­ing my po­si­tion. We will con­tin­ue to re­jig­ger as nec­es­sary so that we can ad­just our pro­ce­dures and, where nec­es­sary, our per­son­nel in all arms of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus. We are at war with the crim­i­nal el­e­ment and will con­tin­ue fight­ing re­lent­less­ly, as we are du­ty-bound to keep our coun­try safe.”

The State of Emer­gency was de­clared on Ju­ly 18 on the ad­vice of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, who said there was a crim­i­nal syn­di­cate where pris­on­ers were op­er­at­ing with their co­horts on the out­side, helped by prison of­fi­cers. Ali and oth­ers were trans­ferred from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) to the Ch­aguara­mas bases of the De­fence Force to con­trol their abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate with the crim­i­nal el­e­ment on the out­side.

Grif­fith: Bad de­ci­sion from start

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said yes­ter­day that the de­ci­sion to move pris­on­ers from MSP to Teteron Bar­racks was er­rat­ic and dras­tic.

“Re­mov­ing the pris­on­ers from the pris­ons was a clear in­di­ca­tion of sur­ren­der and al­so in­di­rect­ly stat­ed that our prison ser­vice was in­com­pe­tent and in­ca­pable of prop­er­ly se­cur­ing well-known pris­on­ers. This was a slap in the face to the Prison Ser­vice, and turn­ing a mil­i­tary camp in our coun­try in­to a Guan­tanamo Bay was not the so­lu­tion,” Grif­fith said.

He added that as com­mis­sion­er, he had sim­i­lar in­for­ma­tion but “did not hit the pan­ic but­ton.” He said there are rogue el­e­ments in se­cu­ri­ty units around the world, and shift­ing the prob­lem from one pro­tec­tive ser­vice in­sti­tu­tion to an­oth­er was nev­er the so­lu­tion. He said there was a three-tiered se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem that was dis­man­tled af­ter he left of­fice, giv­ing rise to the for­ma­tion of the crime syn­di­cate.

Oth­er PDOs gazetted

De­ten­tion or­ders were al­so is­sued and gazetted yes­ter­day against Ron­nie Seeth and Ja­heim “Kill Moves” Boney.

Seeth is al­leged­ly a mem­ber of a gang and is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in large-scale traf­fick­ing of il­le­gal nar­cotics, firearms, am­mu­ni­tion, con­tra­band or un­cus­tomed goods, hu­man traf­fick­ing and fu­el smug­gling.

“He and oth­ers are ac­tive­ly en­gaged in steal­ing seized nar­cotics and re­dis­trib­ut­ing it do­mes­ti­cal­ly. He and oth­ers are en­gaged in pro­vid­ing con­fi­den­tial op­er­a­tional in­for­ma­tion to known do­mes­tic and crim­i­nal el­e­ments. He al­so man­ages a sep­a­rate net­work for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of il­le­gal nar­cotics, firearms, am­mu­ni­tion, con­tra­band or un­cus­tomed goods and hu­man traf­fick­ing. These ac­tiv­i­ties are a threat to pub­lic safe­ty.”

Boney is al­leged to be a mem­ber of the Gon­za­les fac­tion of the Ras­ta City 7 Gang. He is al­leged­ly a sus­pect in the mur­der of three peo­ple.

“He is al­so a sus­pect in the shoot­ing death of a po­lice of­fi­cer and a sub­se­quent shoot­ing at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. The de­tainee, through the OCG, is known to have ac­cess to a cache of high-pow­ered ri­fles which are used in the shoot­ings. He, to­geth­er with re­lat­ed per­sons, have im­mi­nent plans to car­ry out sev­er­al reprisal shoot­ings us­ing firearms in pub­lic places. These most re­cent in­ci­dents have giv­en rise to im­mi­nent pub­lic reprisal shoot­ings which en­dan­ger the safe­ty of the pub­lic.”