Asha Javeed
Lead Editor Investigations
asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt
“We are not a cult.”
That’s the definite statement from Pastor Pastor Ian Albert Ezekiel Brown, the self-proclaimed spy who was once employed at the country’s Strategic Services Agency (SSA) and is the principal of the Jerusalem Bride (JB church) in Arima.
Brown took offence to the “cult” label and suggested that the country’s parliamentarians “look at Jim Jones and those other types of mad people.”
His statement to the media came ten days after Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley read into Hansard a statement on the findings of an audit conducted on the SSA by director Brigadier Anthony Phillips-Spencer. The audit revealed that the SSA under former director Roger Best amassed military-grade weapons and ammunition, and operated a highly trained and militarised so-called Tactical Response Unit. It also found there were disturbing practices of nepotism and opportunism leading to a concentration of members of one church being hired by the SSA, instances of dishonesty and deep deception and the SSA was increasingly incapable of securing public trust.
“Such persons belonged to a cult which was arming itself while preaching a doctrine for trained military and paramilitary personnel with a religious calling to be the most suitable persons to replace the country’s political leadership. They were exerting high levels of influence on the affairs of the agency to the detriment of National Security,” Dr Rowley said.
“It is the absolute fact that we were never a cult, we are not a cult, and we resent the fact that we are being so-called. WE WILL NEVER BE A CULT!!!! I know fully well what a cult is, and what they are capable of, and I do despise them all,” Brown said in a statement to the media yesterday.
He said he was “constrained to do some writing at this juncture, to make certain of the fact that “silence does not mean consent.”’
“Truly, many lines have been overstepped by the choosing of certain individuals in the hierarchy of the policy and politics of the stage now occupied by this present Government.
“How desperate can any political group be to prove that a certain Bishop of a legitimate Full Gospel organization, has established a cult group, and this so, at the helm of a National Security agency in Trinidad and Tobago? This blasphemous action can eventually cause this propaganda, to be the catalyst for our nation (or at the least, this Government), to be branded as having the craziest national leadership since time began.
“I was careful to notice that only “Christian people” were fired recently from the now infamous SSA. I have been told that those fired were from Baptist to Catholic (and everything in between). No Hindus, Muslims or any other category of religion was targeted,” Brown said.
“This Trinidad and Tobago is not China or Russia. Why have you people attacked our Christian community?”
Following investigations into the SSA, Brown, along with two former SSA employees, Sgt Sherwin Waldron and Susan Portell-Griffith, have been charged with “transferring” four “prohibited firearms” from the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) to the SSA.
However, while police investigations continue, no other charges have been laid against former SSA employees.
Former director Roger Best was detained, questioned and subsequently released as there was no evidence to charge him with misbehaviour in public office.
Last week, Best told the Sunday Guardian that the claims of a coup plot are “not only preposterous but ludicrous.”
Jerusalem Bride Church
Brown described the State’s actions against the SSA as an attack against “Christians who love righteousness, and choose to be puppets to absolutely no one.”
“If the nation has not as yet seen this blasphemy for what it actually is: this is an attack against THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST!!!” We at the Jerusalem Bride Church still help restore broken homes and marriages and are not the agents of divisions or seditions.
“We still help the poor and needy. We assist children’s homes in several ways. We assist our community in whatever way we can. Our lifestyle and fruit of character in our community are embraced by those who know us in truth. We are intolerant to divisiveness and the propagation of disharmony,” he said.
He said that in the JB church they emphasize in their preaching that “salvation through the Cross and the Blood of Jesus Christ, The Kingdom of God that Jesus spoke about in “The OUR FATHER Prayer”, Heaven and Hell, The Second return of Jesus, and the Rapture, Righteousness, Love, Holiness, Godliness, Purity, Worship, Prayer, Fellowship, Forgiveness to everyone, Integrity, Longsuffering, Patience, Temperance, Justice, Faith, Mercy and Truth.”
Conversely, he added, the JB church preaches “against the sins written in the Ten Commandments, and also hate, revenge, lusting, worldliness, heresies, schisms, adultery, fornication, drunkenness, witchcraft, whoremongery and revelry And also, against everything that Jesus told us to not do, as found written in the Bible.
“I have kept myself from all of the common vices. No drinking, smoking, sexual vices, never once have I even touched marijuana or illegal drugs. Besides these things, I have never committed either fornication or adultery since I was born and this is true up to this very day,” he said.
Brown said at 24, he did part-time Bible school evening classes for two years, from 1981 to 1983, at the West Indies School of Theology before going on to the full-time programme from 1984 to 1987. He then pursued a degree programme at the Caribbean Mission Bible School from 1990 to 1993.
“I was made a pastor (by the Pentecostal Assembles of the West Indies), of a Church in Pinto Road, Arima, in 1986, while I was still attending Bible School in that organization. I pastored that church for eight years,” he said.
Brown said he was made a pastor at four different churches which all still exist today.
“I still hold on rigidly to the integrity of their Biblical beliefs. I have been a faithful husband to my “still the same” loving wife Sandi since 1979. We have two biological boy children (The first was born in 1984),” he said.
Brown said he has also been a singer/songwriter and an author of 12 books, eight of which can be found online at Amazon.
“I am also the inventor of three Bible-based board games. I hold US patents for two of them. In addition, I have been a travelling evangelist since 1987. I have held ministerial credentials with the following Christian organizations thus far - the Pentecostal Assemblies of The West Indies (PAWI), the Full Gospel Association Of Trinidad and Tobago, Kingsway Fellowship International of Des Moines, Iowa, Congress WBN ((International), The Tabernacle of Praise For All Nations (International), Faith Assembly International and the Association Of Independent Ministers (AIM).”
Pastor and SSA entwined
Best is a pastor at the Jerusalem Bride where the sermons focus on doomsday-like issues.
As the SSA scandal unfolded, Best took a backseat in addressing allegations that were levied against him and the agency and in response to questions from the Sunday Guardian over the past several months, he would respond with Bible passages.
So how did the pastor of a church get hired as an advisor to the director of the country’s intelligence agency?
Religious leaders were targeted by the SSA because of their access to communities, to source information - from pundits to priests to imams. That’s how Pastor Brown got into the information-sharing business.
He started off earning small sums from the now-disbanded Special Anti-Crime Unit of T&T under Brigadier Peter Joseph. At that time, he said he was a contractor. Information obtained suggests he owns Mammoth Contracting- but had his ear on the ground which proved useful.
For years, he was paid $10,000 by the SSA for information but last year he was formally employed as Best’s advisor for $25,000 a month.
He told Guardian Media former Air Guard captain Kester Weekes (who has been recalled from DC), is a member of his church who introduced Best to him by bringing him to church. Brown described Best as a “born-again” Christian who is a vehicle to do good work in the country.
In that period of getting to know Best, Brown’s son was hired at the SSA. So impressed was Best with Brown that he would allow him to sit in on high-level meetings, travel with him (they travelled together to Israel last year) and allowed him to interface with international security counterparts.
Best also spent his spare time at the construction facility of Brown’s church.
Last week, Guardian Media reported that former SSA agents, including Best and former director of administration Joanne Daniel, are gearing up to sue the State.
Among the investigations are murders linked to the agency through the Tactical Unit established by Best.
The Sunday Guardian reported last week that three murders—the 2019 murders of Bryan Felix and Aleem Khan, whose bodies were found in a forested part of Cumuto on October 13, 2019, and CCTV camera contractor Andy Daniel—were linked to the SSA probe.
Investigators are reportedly looking at the similarity in patterns between the murders of Daniel and alleged gangster Anthon “Bombay” Boney in September 2021.
SSA Timeline (Put In Box)
On March 2, in a Facebook post, the Office of the Prime Minister issued a statement which said that the director of the SSA, Major Roger Best had been sent on administrative leave and T&T Ambassador to the US, Philips-Spencer appointed acting director.
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said Best was sent on leave based on troubling information provided to the National Security Council (NSC) by the T&T Police Service (TTPS). He said the information warranted drastic intervention.
On March 11, in an interview with the Express, Pastor Ian Albert Ezekiel Brown, came forward to claim he is a spy at the SSA because his cover was blown when police raided his church on March 9. However, Guardian Media understands that Brown is a consultant to Best at the agency.
Best is one of nine elders in Brown’s church.
Brown told Guardian Media yesterday that if he had made himself public in the media, the members of his church who are officers would have been fired.
One of the people he claims is on the firing line is his son, who was employed at the agency before him.“We are not a cult.”
That’s the definite statement from Pastor Pastor Ian Albert Ezekiel Brown, the self-proclaimed spy who was once employed at the country’s Strategic Services Agency (SSA) and is the principal of the Jerusalem Bride (JB church) in Arima.
Brown took offence to the “cult” label and suggested that the country’s parliamentarians “look at Jim Jones, and those other types of mad people.”
His statement to the media came ten days after Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley read into Hansard a statement on the findings of an audit conducted on the SSA by director Brigadier Anthony Phillips-Spencer. The audit revealed that the SSA under former director Roger Best amassed military grade weapons and ammunition, operated a highly trained and militarised so-called Tactical Response Unit. It also found there were disturbing practices of nepotism and opportunism leading to a concentration of members of one church being hired by the SSA, instances of dishonesty and deep deception and the SSA was increasingly incapable of securing public trust.
“Such persons belonged to a cult which was arming itself while preaching a doctrine for trained military and paramilitary personnel with a religious calling to be the most suitable persons to replace the country’s political leadership. They were exerting high levels of influence on the affairs of the agency to the detriment of National Security,” Dr Rowley said.
“It is the absolute fact that we were never a cult, we are not a cult, and we resent the fact that we are being so called. WE WILL NEVER BE A CULT!!!! I know fully well what a cult is, and what they are capable of, and I do despise them all,” Brown said in a statement to the media yesterday.
He said he was “constrained to do some writing at this juncture, to make certain of the fact that “silence does not mean consen.”’
“Truly, many lines have been overstepped by the choosing of certain individuals in the hierarchy of the policy and politics of the stage now occupied by this present Government.
“How desperate can any political group be to prove that a certain Bishop of a legitimate Full Gospel organization, has established a cult-group, and this so, at the helm of a National Security agency in Trinidad and Tobago. This blasphemous action can eventually cause this propaganda, to be the catalyst for our nation (or at the least, this Government), to be branded as having the craziest national leadership, since time began.
“I was careful to notice that only “Christian people” were fired recently from the now infamous SSA. I have been told that those fired were from Baptist to Catholic (and everything in between). No Hindus, Muslims or any other category of a religion was targeted,” Brown said.
“This Trinidad and Tobago is not China or Russia. Why have you people attacked our Christian community?”
Following investigations into the SSA, Brown, along with two former SSA employees, Sgt Sherwin Waldron and Susan Portell-Griffith, have been charged with “transferring” four “prohibited firearms” from the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) to the SSA.
However, while police investigations continue, no other charges have been laid against former SSA employees.
Former director Roger Best, was detained, questioned and subsequently released as there was no evidence to charge him with misbehaviour in public office.
Last week, Best told the Sunday Guardian that the claims of coup plot are “not only preposterous but ludicrous.”
Jerusalem Bride Church
Brown described the State’s actions against the SSA as an attack against “Christians who love righteousness, and choose to be puppets to absolutely no one.”
“If the nation has not as yet seen this blasphemy for what it actually is: this is an attack against THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST!!!” We at the Jerusalem Bride Church still help restore broken homes and marriages, and are not the agents of divisions or seditions.
“We still help the poor and needy. We assist children’s homes in several ways. We assist our community in whatever way we can. Our lifestyle and fruit of character in our community is embraced by those who know us in truth. We are intolerant to divisiveness and the propagation of disharmony,” he said.
He said that in the JB church they emphasize in their preaching that “salvation through the Cross and the Blood of Jesus Christ, The Kingdom of God that Jesus spoke about in “The OUR FATHER Prayer”, Heaven and Hell, The Second return of Jesus, and the Rapture, Righteousness, Love, Holiness, Godliness, Purity, Worship, Prayer, Fellowship, Forgiveness to everyone, Integrity, Longsuffering, Patience, Temperance, Justice, Faith, Mercy and Truth.”
Conversely, he added, the JB church preaches “against the sins written in the Ten Commandments, and also hate, revenge, lusting, worldliness, heresies, schisms, adultery, fornication, drunkenness, witchcraft, whoremongery and revelry And also, against everything that Jesus told us to not do, as found written in the Bible.
“I have kept myself from all of the common of vices. No drinking, smoking, sexual vices, never ever once have I even touched marijuana or illegal drugs. Besides these things, I have never committed either fornication or adultery since I was born and this is true up to this very day,” he said.
Brown said at 24, he did part time Bible school evening classes for two years, from 1981 to 1983, at the West Indies School of Theology before going on to the full-time programme from 1984 to 1987. He then pursued a degree programme at the Caribbean Mission Bible School from 1990 to 1993.
“I was made a pastor (by the Pentecostal Assembles of the West Indies), of a Church in Pinto Road, Arima, in 1986, while I was still attending Bible School in that organization. I pastored that church for eight years,” he said.
Brown said he was made a pastor at four different churches which all still exist today.
“I still hold on rigidly to the integrity of their Biblical beliefs. I have been a faithful husband to my “still the same” loving wife Sandi since 1979. We have two biological boy children (The first was born in 1984),” he said.
Brown said he has also been a singer/songwriter and an author of 12 books, eight of which can be found online at Amazon.
“I am also the inventor of three Bible-based board-games. I hold US patents for two of them. In addition, I have been a travelling evangelist since 1987. I have held ministerial credentials with the following Christian organizations thus far - the Pentecostal Assemblies of The West Indies (PAWI), the Full Gospel Association Of Trinidad and Tobago, Kingsway Fellowship International of Des Moines, Iowa, Congress WBN ((International), The Tabernacle of Praise For All Nations (International), Faith Assembly International and the Association Of Independent Ministers (AIM).”
Pastor and SSA entwined
Best is a pastor at the Jerusalem Bride where the sermons focus on doomsday-like issues.
As the SSA scandal unfolded, Best took a backseat on addressing allegations were levied against him and the agency and in response to questions from the Sunday Guardian over the past several months, he would respond with Bible passages.
So how did the pastor of a church get hired as an advisor to the director of the country’s intelligence agency?
Religious leaders were targeted by the SSA because of their access to communities, to source information - from pundits to priests to imams. That’s how Pastor Brown got into the information sharing business.
He started off earning small sums from the now disbanded Special Anti-Crime Unit of T&T under Brigadier Peter Joseph. At that time, he said he was a contractor. Information obtained suggests he owns Mammoth Contracting- but had his ear on the ground which proved useful.
For years, he was paid $10,000 by the SSA for information but last year he was formally employed as Best’s advisor for $25,000 a month.
He told Guardian Media former Air Guard captain Kester Weekes (who has been recalled from DC), is a member of his church who introduced Best to him by bringing him to church. Brown described Best as a “born-again” Christian who is a vehicle to do good work in the country.
In that period of getting to know Best, Brown’s son was hired at the SSA. So impressed was Best with Brown that he would allow him to sit in on high-level meetings, travel with him (they travelled together to Israel last year) and allowed him to interface with international security counterparts.
Best also spent his spare time at the construction facility of Brown’s church.
Last week, Guardian Media reported that former SSA agents, including Best and former director of administration Joanne Daniel, are gearing up to sue the State.
Among the investigations are murders linked to the agency through the Tactical Unit established by Best.
The Sunday Guardian reported last week that three murders—the 2019 murders of Bryan Felix and Aleem Khan, whose bodies were found in a forested part of Cumuto on October 13, 2019, and CCTV camera contractor Andy Daniel—were linked to the SSA probe.
Investigators are reportedly looking at the similarity in patterns between the murders of Daniel and alleged gangster Anthon “Bombay” Boney in September 2021.
SSA Timeline (Put In Box)
On March 2, in a Facebook post, the Office of the Prime Minister issued a statement which said that the director of the SSA, Major Roger Best had been sent on administrative leave and T&T Ambassador to the US, Philips-Spencer appointed acting director.
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said Best was sent on leave based on troubling information provided to the National Security Council (NSC) by the T&T Police Service (TTPS). He said the information warranted drastic intervention.
On March 11, in an interview with the Express, Pastor Ian Albert Ezekiel Brown, came forward to claim he is a spy at the SSA because his cover was blown when police raided his church on March 9. However, Guardian Media understands that Brown is a actually a consultant to Best at the agency.
Best is one of nine elders in Brown’s church.
Brown told Guardian Media yesterday that if he had made himself public in the media, the members of his church who are officers would have been fired.
One of the people he claims is on the firing line is his son, who was employed at the agency before him.