Gail Alexan­der

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and the PNM Gov­ern­ment should pur­sue the kid­nap­ping cas­es of Debe res­i­dent Ria Sookdeo and San Fer­nan­do de­sign­er Kir­by Mo­hammed with the same “ex­u­ber­ance” they em­ployed to find Palmiste res­i­dent Na­tal­ie Pol­lon­ais, says UNC Sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen.

“Those peo­ple are en­ti­tled to the same pro­tec­tion and the same rights and priv­i­leges as every oth­er cit­i­zen of T&T,” Ramdeen said in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, al­so call­ing for at­ten­tion to the fam­i­lies of Sookdeo and Mo­hammed.

Sookdeo was re­port­ed­ly kid­napped by peo­ple in po­lice uni­form two years ago near Di­a­mond Vil­lage. This case was sim­i­lar to that of Pol­lon­ais’ kid­nap­ping last week.

Mo­hammed mean­while, was last seen in Feb­ru­ary 2015 and his fam­i­ly was sub­se­quent­ly threat­ened to pay up.

Ramdeen spoke on the is­sue dur­ing de­bate on amend­ments to a num­ber of laws de­signed to in­crease lo­cal judges from 49 to 64 yes­ter­day.

He said de­spite $26 bil­lion spent on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in three years and leg­isla­tive agen­das he wasn’t hope­ful the cur­rent pro­posed leg­is­la­tion would bring re­lief in the jus­tice sys­tem since it on­ly dealt with the end-prod­uct of the sit­u­a­tion. He said the pro­pos­al wasn’t need­ed “...if you ent catch­ing peo­ple.”

Ramdeen not­ed in­creas­ing crime, with mur­ders up 13 per cent over 2017 to 2018, rape/in­cest (up 29 per cent) and se­ri­ous crimes (50 per cent).

He not­ed kid­nap­ping had risen 32 per cent and kid­nap­ping for ran­som, 133 per cent, though rob­beries, nar­cotics and firearms crimes were at low­er lev­els.

He said Sep­tem­ber 28 marks four months since procla­ma­tion of the An­ti-Gang law, yet no one had been ar­rest­ed on that ba­sis.

Ramdeen not­ed the re­cent press brief­ing held by the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter cit­ing the po­lice’s good work on find­ing Pol­lon­ais.

Say­ing every­one was over­joyed she was found, Ramdeen added: “But Sep­tem­ber 29 will mark two years Ria Sookdeo was kid­napped.”

But Al-Rawi in­ter­ject­ed say­ing: “We have leads on that.”

Ramdeen con­tin­ued: “I’m hap­py to hear that. But I’d ask the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to do this: with the same ex­u­ber­ance he an­nounced for Ms Na­tal­ie Pol­lon­ais.

“When the PNM goes to San Fer­nan­do City Hall (last night), they should meet Ms Lin­da Mo­hammed, the moth­er of Kir­by Mo­hammed and tell her that the same ex­u­ber­ance they used to get back Na­tal­ie Pol­lon­ais, they’ll use to get some kind of re­lief to get back Kir­by Mo­hammed and they’ll give some kind of clo­sure to that fam­i­ly.”

Ramdeen not­ed Al-Rawi’s state­ment that this was “his con­stituent” and he’d gone to the fam­i­ly. Ramdeen said the coun­try didn’t know that.

Ramdeen added, “The way T&T will know you’re do­ing your job, just as it was im­por­tant for you to have the press con­fer­ence with Gary (Grif­fith) and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter (on Pol­lon­ais), it’s im­por­tant for the coun­try to know what you’re do­ing for the peo­ple you don’t find al­so.

“It’s im­por­tant for the coun­try to know the law en­force­ment agen­cies are con­tin­u­ing work on these cold cas­es so peo­ple will have con­fi­dence those cas­es haven’t been for­got­ten—I haven’t heard Ria Sookdeo’s fa­ther say any­one has come to meet him on the mat­ter.”

Al-Rawi in­ter­ject­ed, “That’s Kam­la’s style...”

Ramdeen replied: “Kam­la isn’t in Gov­ern­ment be­cause they vot­ed for you all to pro­vide re­lief.

“Af­ter three years you’ve been an abom­inable fail­ure on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. So we don’t want to hear about Kam­la. We want to hear about you; you con­trol all the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus—take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when you fail.”