Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is de­mand­ing an ex­pla­na­tion on the “cer­tain in­for­ma­tion” that led to him be­ing flagged twice dur­ing re­cent tran­sit stops in An­tigua, in­sist­ing the da­ta orig­i­nat­ed in T&T and ac­cus­ing state en­ti­ties of a cam­paign of po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion.

Row­ley spoke out yes­ter­day, days af­ter An­tigua Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne con­firmed that Row­ley’s name had trig­gered ad­di­tion­al scruti­ny in An­tigua’s im­mi­gra­tion sys­tem while en route to Montser­rat. Browne told the An­tigua Ob­serv­er that Row­ley was not de­tained and was treat­ed with “full re­spect” be­fit­ting a for­mer head of gov­ern­ment. He said the in­for­ma­tion that prompt­ed the “flag” did not orig­i­nate in An­tigua and has since been re­moved from its sys­tem.

Row­ley, how­ev­er, yes­ter­day ques­tioned the source of the alert.

“What was this ‘cer­tain in­for­ma­tion’? It cer­tain­ly had me held up and put un­der con­sul­ta­tion and scruti­ny by air­port im­mi­gra­tion staff,” he told the Guardian.

“If noth­ing was there, there would have been noth­ing to re­move. If it was in An­tigua, where else is it pos­si­bly lo­cat­ed? It came from Trinidad. Who could have put it there?”

The for­mer prime min­is­ter al­so linked the in­ci­dent to what he de­scribed as pre­vi­ous at­tempts to em­bar­rass his fam­i­ly, claim­ing the same au­thor­i­ty once sought to re­voke al­leged diplo­mat­ic pass­ports be­long­ing to his daugh­ters—though he said they do not hold such pass­ports.

Row­ley fur­ther ac­cused the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion of “a das­tard­ly act of po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion” and said the episode was part of a “vi­cious defama­tion cam­paign” de­signed to un­der­mine him.

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and Gov­ern­ment have both de­nied any role in flag­ging Row­ley or trans­mit­ting in­for­ma­tion that would place him on any In­ter­pol watch­list. An­tigua has launched its own in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent but has dis­tanced it­self from re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not re­spond yes­ter­day to the T&T Guardian’s query on Row­ley’s com­ments, in­clud­ing those con­cern­ing his daugh­ters.

The con­tro­ver­sy has reignit­ed po­lit­i­cal ten­sions, with Row­ley point­ing to Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress fig­ures such as Jack Warn­er for ques­tion­ing his in­tegri­ty over the mat­ter. He warned that the is­sue now falls to the coun­try to con­front “hon­est­ly or disin­gen­u­ous­ly dis­hon­est­ly.”