JOSHUA SEEMU­N­GAL

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Busi­ness­man and firearms deal­er Brent Thomas is hop­ing that the “truth” will be shared about this de­ten­tion and ex­tra­di­tion af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s crit­i­cism on Tues­day about the role in which Cari­com played in his ar­rest from Bar­ba­dos to Trinidad and To­ba­go in Oc­to­ber 2022.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Thomas said, “I hope one day the per­sons re­spon­si­ble will be ex­posed and the truth shared in the pub­lic do­main.”

Thomas had pre­vi­ous­ly called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the role played by for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“The ad­mis­sion of guilt on the Row­ley gov­ern­ment’s part, in my opin­ion, should be du­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed to un­der­stand more of who, how, and why the loss of in­di­vid­ual rights could be so eas­i­ly swept away with due process. Hav­ing re­flect­ed on my sit­u­a­tion since and over these chal­leng­ing years of so much per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al loss, the ex­tra ju­di­cial forces in our coun­try should con­cern us all,” Thomas said last Sep­tem­ber af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie with­drew the State’s ap­peal against a High Court rul­ing in the le­gal firearm’s favour.

While speak­ing at the Cari­com Sum­mit in St Kitts on Tues­day evening, Per­sad-Bisses­sar called the Thomas mat­ter a kid­nap­ping of a T&T cit­i­zen that was co­or­di­nat­ed by the then gov­ern­ment.

She sug­gest­ed it was fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Cari­com.

“He was placed in hand­cuffs, trans­port­ed to the air­port, and then back to Trinidad. I think an RSS (Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices) plan was used to trans­port him. He was kid­napped,” she said.

“I wrote to the sec­re­tari­at of Cari­com ask­ing what hap­pened? How could you have fa­cil­i­tat­ed the kid­nap­ping of a T&T cit­i­zen? Please let us know what was hap­pen­ing and how it hap­pened. To date, that was 2022, I have not had a re­sponse from the Sec­re­tari­at,” she said dur­ing her speech.

Mean­while, yes­ter­day, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith called for a com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the Thomas mat­ter.

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was right to ex­press con­cern and dis­ap­point­ment over what he called the cov­er-up of Thomas’s ab­duc­tion.

“How­ev­er, as much as the Prime Min­is­ter voic­es her con­cern in re­la­tion to the deaf­en­ing si­lence by Cari­com over this fi­as­co, clo­sure and ac­count­abil­i­ty will nev­er be re­vealed or take place via oth­er re­gion­al bod­ies—in­clu­sive of the Bar­ba­dos Gov­ern­ment, the Po­lice Ser­vice in Bar­ba­dos, or the Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al—as this would lead to ut­ter em­bar­rass­ment that no coun­try wants re­vealed to the world.”

He said an en­quiry was es­sen­tial be­cause it showed that gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials could be the cat­a­lyst in “aid­ing and abet­ting the ab­duc­tion of a T&T na­tion­al in an­oth­er coun­try”.

“The rea­son why a COE should be pro­claimed for this in­ci­dent is not just to ex­pose the per­pe­tra­tors and bring them to jus­tice, but al­so to pre­vent a re­cur­rence in the fu­ture. Yes­ter­day it was Brent Thomas, but to­mor­row it could be any oth­er cit­i­zen if, heav­en for­bid, a gov­ern­ment re­turns to of­fice to tar­get and witch-hunt cit­i­zens for po­lit­i­cal gain,” Grif­fith said.

The PM’s crit­i­cism of Cari­com came ap­prox­i­mate­ly five months af­ter the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al apol­o­gised to Thomas, dis­con­tin­u­ing the State’s ap­peal against the High Court’s de­ci­sion.

The de­ci­sion paved the way for ne­go­ti­a­tions for a set­tle­ment, which is ex­pect­ed to even­tu­al­ly cost the state mil­lions.