JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Hay­den Forde says the 10 men ar­rest­ed out­side the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre in San­ta Rosa were in­deed held as part of an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a mur­der plot against law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.

On Sat­ur­day, Forde told Guardian Me­dia that the men were held dur­ing a ran­dom search of men who came to pick up a re­leased in­mate.

His com­ment, how­ev­er, seemed at odds with the po­lice ser­vice, which in­di­cat­ed via a me­dia re­lease that the men were held as part of a foiled plot that was part­ly re­spon­si­ble for why the State of Emer­gency was called.

In a voice record­ing on the ac­tion, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said: “The TTPS ob­tained par­tic­u­lar in­tel­li­gence which sug­gest­ed that per­sons were in­tent on car­ry­ing out an at­tack against law en­force­ment at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre. I im­me­di­ate­ly co­or­di­nat­ed with DCP Suzette Mar­tin and a covert op­er­a­tion was launched. This covert op­er­a­tion yield­ed fruit ear­li­er to­day with the de­ten­tion of ten sus­pects.”

Gue­var­ro claimed the men were caught with a stolen Toy­ota Aqua and a re­volver af­ter be­ing caught while try­ing to flee the scene.

“They rolled in with their stolen wheels this morn­ing and their bor­rowed brava­do. But when mis­guid­ed loy­al­ty meets trained re­solve, it is not the law that will flee — it is the law that will fin­ish the job,” he warned.

The TTPS linked the ar­rests to the on­go­ing SoE, say­ing in­tel­li­gence sug­gest­ed that in­mates, with help from crim­i­nal as­so­ciates out­side, were plot­ting to kill pub­lic of­fi­cials and mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Sat­ur­day night, how­ev­er, Forde said he was in­formed that the men were held dur­ing a rou­tine search and it was un­re­lat­ed to the plot.

Asked about Gue­var­ro’s claim, as his of­fi­cers were al­so be­ing threat­ened, Forde said then: “My un­der­stand­ing is that per­sons were there to re­ceive an in­di­vid­ual who was be­ing bailed. So, it is not as though some­one or per­sons were there to treat with of­fi­cers. Po­lice of­fi­cers car­ried out a search, and based on that, per­sons were tak­en in­to cus­tody.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Forde said he had since re­ceived in­for­ma­tion on the lat­est de­vel­op­ments which ver­i­fied the po­lice’s ac­count of what ac­tu­al­ly tran­spired.

The 10 men re­main in cus­tody as­sist­ing po­lice with their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.