Sto­ry by MARK BAS­SANT

Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Den­nis Pul­chan has cleared up the mis­con­cep­tion about the trans­fer of in­mate Ra­jaee Ali from Re­mand Yard in Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) to Build­ing 13, af­ter al­le­ga­tions were lev­elled against him by the Waa­ji­hat­ul Is­laamiyyah (The Is­lam­ic Front), in a me­dia re­lease on Thurs­day.

This is con­trary to claims made by the Is­lam­ic Front that Ali was trans­ferred to Build­ing 13—which it iden­ti­fied as "an ed­i­fice for pun­ish­ment, one which is not in a good phys­i­cal state and lacks prop­er in­fra­struc­tur­al space".

The re­lease fur­ther con­tend­ed that Ali's at­tor­neys were ques­tioned why he was "forcibly re­moved from Re­mand Yard MSP to Build­ing 13 with­out just cause or rea­son".

Pul­chan coun­tered, stat­ing:

"The Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er has the au­thor­i­ty to move a pris­on­er from point A to point B. I can tell you Build­ing 13 is not a cell block or pun­ish­ment area, but rather a hous­ing area, where 200 oth­er in­mates are lo­cat­ed," Pul­chan told Guardian Me­dia.

"There was no mal­ice in mov­ing him from point A to point B. I spoke with Mr. Ali this morn­ing (Thurs­day) and every­thing was am­i­ca­ble," claimed Pul­chan.

Pul­chan said there was no re­al rea­son for mov­ing Mr. Ali.

The Is­lam­ic Front in­di­cat­ed as well that Ali's at­tor­neys al­so were tak­ing is­sue with the com­mis­sion­er for his fail­ure to im­ple­ment prop­er COVID-19 pro­to­cols at the Port of Spain Prison, where a pris­on­er test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus a few days ago.

"We are do­ing every­thing to fight COVID-19 in­side the pris­ons. We are mak­ing masks for pris­on­ers so they can be pro­tect­ed," Pul­chan said.

The Is­lam­ic Front al­so has called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley, and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, to re­spond to this mat­ter.