The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is ac­cus­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds of us­ing his in­flu­ence to ex­pe­dite firearm users’ li­cences (FULs) for his se­cu­ri­ty de­tail.

The par­ty may soon ask the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to in­ves­ti­gate Hinds for al­leged­ly abus­ing his pow­er as a min­is­ter. The Op­po­si­tion be­lieves what is even more egre­gious is that Hinds seemed to have lied about it at a sit­ting of a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment in 2022 and may al­so file a mo­tion of priv­i­leges against him.

Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal pro­vid­ed Guardian Me­dia with What­sApp text mes­sage ex­changes pur­port­ed­ly be­tween Hinds and then po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith in 2021.

Hinds, who was sent screen­shots of the mes­sages via What­sApp yes­ter­day, dis­missed the claims.

“I have no time for side shows and skit­tish ra ra with Mooni­lal and Gary Grif­fith, both of whom have se­ri­ous ques­tions to an­swer to the courts and the po­lice, re­spec­tive­ly! I pre­fer to leave them to an­swer their ques­tions alone.”

Grif­fith said that he could con­firm nor de­ny the mes­sages. He ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, “What was amaz­ing is when Hinds was asked that in Par­lia­ment, he de­nied, which was a lie, and I will leave it at that.”

Dr Mooni­lal pro­vid­ed four pic­tures of the al­leged con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Hinds and Grif­fith.

It be­gins: “Com­mis­sion­er, I have a cou­ple FUL ap­pli­ca­tions for my se­cu­ri­ty de­tail of sol­diers. There is no ob­jec­tion from their War­rant and the TTDF. I have watched them now for two years and I am sat­is­fied that they are fit and wor­thy. They ro­tate with the CJ’s de­tail as well. Please give them your most favourable con­sid­er­a­tion. Should I send them di­rect­ly to you? Thank you.”

The re­sponse pur­port­ed­ly from Grif­fith said, “Sir. Yeah. Just whats app me full name with ref­er­ence num­ber.”

A for­ward­ed mes­sage was then blanked out in the pic­ture. How­ev­er, the fol­low up mes­sage al­leged­ly from Hinds said, “The oth­ers have not yet ap­plied. I have the com­plet­ed ap­pli­ca­tion forms. Should I send them to you?”

An­oth­er mes­sage said to be from Hinds said, “You see why we are in a mess? Com­mis­sion­er what is the po­si­tion with the ap­pli­ca­tions for the guys on my de­tail?”

The re­sponse was, “Sir. Send me back the names and ref num­bers please.”

A few mes­sages af­ter were blacked out in the screen­shot sent to Guardian Me­dia. It picks up with Hinds pur­port­ed­ly say­ing, “Com­mis­sion­er. Two have file num­bers. The oth­ers are al­so of the Se­cu­ri­ty de­tail, but their ap­pli­ca­tions are lan­guish­ing in the po­lice sta­tions as not­ed. Thanks.”

The re­sponse, al­leged­ly from Grif­fith said, “Would han­dle now, Sir.”

What the Firearms Act states

The mes­sages do not state if the FULs were for pri­vate use or to as­sist them with the ex­e­cu­tion of their se­cu­ri­ty du­ties. How­ev­er, Sec­tion 7 (1) of the Firearms Act states that cer­tain mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, while in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties are ex­empt­ed from need­ing a FUL. The act states, “The fol­low­ing per­sons are ex­empt from the pro­vi­sions of sec­tion 6(1) that re­late to hav­ing a firearm or am­mu­ni­tion in their pos­ses­sion: (a) a po­lice of­fi­cer act­ing in his ca­pac­i­ty as such or any mem­ber of a Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice with­in the mean­ing of Part III of the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Act act­ing in his ca­pac­i­ty as such or a mem­ber of the Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice es­tab­lished un­der the Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice Act act­ing in his ca­pac­i­ty as such or a mem­ber of the De­fence Force act­ing in his ca­pac­i­ty as such, or a prison of­fi­cer act­ing in his ca­pac­i­ty as such, or a Cus­toms of­fi­cer act­ing in his ca­pac­i­ty as such if the firearm and am­mu­ni­tion are the prop­er­ty of the Gov­ern­ment.”

This sug­gests that if the firearms were for the min­is­ter’s se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel to con­duct their du­ties, they did not need to ac­quire a FUL.

Hinds at 2022 JSC: I made no rec­om­men­da­tion to any com­mis­sion­er for any­body

Mooni­lal, speak­ing about what tran­spired at the JSC meet­ing, said, “When I pressed Mr Hinds on this mat­ter in a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee, he said cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that he nev­er rec­om­mend­ed any­one for FULs and then we have in our pos­ses­sion screen­shots in­volv­ing him.”

Guardian Me­dia went back to that JSC sit­ting in No­vem­ber 2022, which was aimed at ex­am­in­ing the fac­tors that con­tribute to the preva­lence of il­le­gal firearms and gun vi­o­lence in T&T.

Dur­ing the sit­ting, Dr Mooni­lal told Min­is­ter Hinds, who ap­peared be­fore the com­mit­tee, “You in­di­cat­ed then that you had no rec­ol­lec­tion that you rec­om­mend­ed per­sons; min­is­ter, I am invit­ing you to re­flect on that and to cor­rect your­self.”

Min­is­ter Hinds re­spond­ed, “I am say­ing that I have no re­call of rec­om­mend­ing any­body for any firearm.”

Dr Mooni­lal then said, “My ques­tion to the ho­n­ourable min­is­ter is, min­is­ter, on a more re­laxed re­flec­tion, you rec­om­mend­ed ten per­sons to the then com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, and I leave it there.”

This caused some up­roar in the JSC meet­ing with the min­is­ter say­ing, “I want the record to read I made no rec­om­men­da­tion to any com­mis­sion­er for any­body for any firearm. I can ex­plain in greater de­tail, but it will be risky and fool­ish and stu­pid; how­ev­er, suf­fice it to say, I rec­om­mend­ed no one for any firearm.” Yes­ter­day, Dr Mooni­lal said, “I think this con­sti­tutes an abuse of pow­er, and we may well take a de­ci­sion to write to the in­tegri­ty com­mis­sion on this mat­ter where it ap­pears that he is us­ing his au­thor­i­ty to seek the in­ter­est of a few per­sons and not the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, as the case may be.”

He added, “It’s a very se­ri­ous mat­ter, and we in­tend to study the mat­ter close­ly. We have sight now of the screen­shots and we are look­ing at them to see whether or not we can write the in­tegri­ty com­mis­sion and cause an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Fitzger­ald Hinds.”

But it may not end there. Dr Mooni­lal said, “We will al­so look to see if the records of that JSC can be used to file a mo­tion of priv­i­lege against him for that bla­tant lie.”

Grif­fith speaks

Mean­while, Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia, “Ob­vi­ous­ly, I would not go in­to de­tails in­to the names of per­sons and whether they got firearms or not. How­ev­er, in a sim­i­lar way with the Prime Min­is­ter, I was bom­bard­ed con­stant­ly by very se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to get firearms for their friends in high places.” How­ev­er, Grif­fith want­ed to un­der­score that “this is not in any way stat­ing that this is some­thing that is il­le­gal or un­eth­i­cal; the rea­son why they do this is be­cause of the break­down in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of firearms, and that is what hap­pens through­out our pub­lic ser­vice. Peo­ple al­ways try to find a friend and pull a string.”

He added, “If a politi­cian de­cides to de­lib­er­ate­ly try to in­flu­ence or bul­ly the of­fice­hold­er to get some­thing done with­out due process, that is some­thing to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent; I am not stat­ing in any way that is what they did.”

But the for­mer com­mis­sion­er did take aim at the Prime Min­is­ter and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty when he said, “The hypocrisy of Kei­th Row­ley, Fitzger­ald Hinds, and oth­ers be­cause they con­tin­ue to com­plain about me giv­ing firearms to the small busi­ness­man, the farmer, to the home­own­er who wants to pro­tect his fam­i­ly. By me do­ing that, it was a prob­lem, but it was okay for them to ask me for their friends.”