RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Ex­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tions are now on­go­ing in­to two ma­jor in­ci­dents in­volv­ing T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) mem­bers with­in weeks of each oth­er.

In the lat­est in­ci­dent, a Galil as­sault ri­fle as­signed to an of­fi­cer “dis­ap­peared” from Teteron bar­racks in Ch­aguara­mas, which is now on lock­down while the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice al­so in­ves­ti­gates the mat­ter.

In the pre­vi­ous in­ci­dent, back in April, sol­diers as­signed to Pres­i­dent’s House were trans­ferred af­ter they “shot up” a Pres­i­den­tial ve­hi­cle and tried to cov­er it up.

Dur­ing a joint me­dia con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, act­ing Com­mand­ing Of­fi­cer of the T&T Reg­i­ment, Lt Col Ashook Singh, said at about 12.30 am yes­ter­day, a se­nior of­fi­cer on du­ty was alert­ed by a TTDF mem­ber, who was on du­ty and had the ri­fle as­signed to him, that the weapon had gone miss­ing.

“The Or­der­ly of­fi­cer im­me­di­ate­ly con­duct­ed the stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures for such in­ci­dents and im­me­di­ate­ly con­fined Teteron Bar­racks and it re­mains con­fined at this point in time as we con­tin­ue the in­ves­ti­ga­tions. The Or­der­ly of­fi­cer al­so con­duct­ed an im­me­di­ate search of the lo­ca­tion and start­ed a pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tion and alert­ed her Com­mand­ing Of­fi­cer ear­li­er this morn­ing (yes­ter­day). With the ad­vent of more light, a thor­ough search was again con­duct­ed of the vicin­i­ty but the Galil as­sault ri­fle was not found,” Singh said.

He al­so dis­closed that an of­fi­cial re­port was made to the TTPS’ West­ern Di­vi­sion and the po­lice were al­so at the bar­racks work­ing along­side them in in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter.

Last evening, the TTPS al­so of­fered a $75,000 re­ward to any­one who can pro­vide in­for­ma­tion that will lead to the ar­rest and pros­e­cu­tion of per­sons re­spon­si­ble for the dis­ap­pear­ance of the ri­fle from the De­fence Force com­pound.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we would have alert­ed the In­ter-agency Task Force with re­gards to the miss­ing weapon and we are cur­rent­ly work­ing along­side them in terms of gath­er­ing fur­ther in­tel­li­gence and in­for­ma­tion with re­gards to the miss­ing ri­fle,” Singh said.

“The TTR sees this as a very se­ri­ous in­ci­dent and will con­tin­ue to work along­side the TTPS to dili­gent­ly find this as­sault ri­fle and bring the per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice.”

Chief of De­fence Staff, Air Vice Mar­shall Dar­ryl Daniel, who was al­so at the con­fer­ence, said the in­ci­dent was “very dis­turb­ing” but as­sured all ef­forts will be put in place to ad­dress this is­sue, telling the pub­lic to “be guid­ed that the de­ci­sions, the rec­om­men­da­tions and the re­quest made by the De­fence Force are in place to pre­vent such in­ci­dents from oc­cur­ring.”

In re­la­tion to the miss­ing TTDF weapon, the TTPS’ DCP In­ves­ti­ga­tions and In­tel­li­gence, Curt Si­mon, said the po­lice “will leave no stone un­turned in this mat­ter.”

“Any in­for­ma­tion that can lead to find­ing the per­pe­tra­tor and or the weapon, please call the po­lice, you know the num­bers. We are work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly on this mat­ter. Any­one with in­for­ma­tion to share, call us and I can as­sure you that it will be with strict con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.”

Dur­ing the ques­tion-and-an­swer seg­ment, Guardian Me­dia asked about the April in­ci­dent at Pres­i­dent’s House, St Ann’s.

Guardian Me­dia was told that in that in­ci­dent, three TTDF mem­bers—two Lance cor­po­rals and a pri­vate—were trans­ferred fol­low­ing an al­leged in­ci­dent where one of the ve­hi­cles be­long­ing to the pres­i­den­tial fleet—a blue pan­el van—was shot up from the in­side.

“It is be­lieved that the ve­hi­cle per­haps may have left the com­pound, dur­ing which, maybe one of the sol­diers were play­ing with his gun and it went off and shot the ve­hi­cle from in­side and when the ve­hi­cle was brought back on­to the Pres­i­dent’s com­pound, they tried to fix it,” a source close to the mat­ter re­vealed.

“How­ev­er, the Pres­i­dent’s Aide de Camp got privy of what hap­pened and launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to it. The three TTDF mem­bers were im­me­di­ate­ly trans­ferred.”

In re­sponse to this in­ci­dent yes­ter­day, Daniel con­firmed it oc­curred.

“There was an in­ci­dent that oc­curred on the Pres­i­dent’s com­pound con­cern­ing one of the ve­hi­cles and is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed,” Daniel said.

“And as I said be­fore, we hold our­selves to a very high stan­dard and there are codes of con­duct that we live by and when you are found want­i­ng, the rel­a­tive reg­u­la­tions and the De­fence Act will be ap­plied to you,” he said.