For­mer Prime Min­is­ter and for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is  join­ing the call for a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to why for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was flagged while trav­el­ling on his diplo­mat­ic pass­port, say­ing unan­swered ques­tions point to the “un­prece­dent­ed tar­get­ing of high of­fice hold­ers.”

Young is­sued a state­ment on Face­book Thurs­day morn­ing ex­press­ing “se­ri­ous con­cerns” over the in­ci­dent, which oc­curred at An­tigua’s VC Bird In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ear­li­er this month and led to Row­ley be­ing tem­porar­i­ly de­tained twice while tran­sit­ing to and from Montser­rat.

“Who was it that placed Dr Row­ley on any sys­tem flag­ging him?” Young asked. “Who was it that re­quest­ed that Dr Row­ley not be per­mit­ted un­in­ter­rupt­ed pas­sage whilst us­ing his Diplo­mat­ic pass­port?”

Young said the is­sue should con­cern the en­tire gov­ern­ment, re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion. “This is a pass­port is­sued by our coun­try and should be of in­ter­est to our Gov­ern­ment re­gard­less of who the cit­i­zen is—but in this case, it is a Prime Min­is­ter with over 45 years of pub­lic ser­vice to T&T.”

He al­so ques­tioned whether the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment had made any for­mal re­quest to An­tigua for an­swers. “If not, why not?” he said.

Young cit­ed a pub­lic state­ment by An­tigua’s At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Stead­roy Ben­jamin, who con­firmed that Row­ley had been de­tained by An­tiguan im­mi­gra­tion and that the is­sue ap­peared to orig­i­nate in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The post came hours af­ter Row­ley him­self weighed in again, post­ing on Face­book Thurs­day morn­ing that those be­hind the diplo­mat­ic breach were now “en­joy­ing the pro­ceeds and my vic­tim­i­sa­tion” while hid­ing “be­hind the ig­no­rance of those who don’t know bet­ter.”

“The one cer­tain fact is that a TT Diplo­mat­ic pass­port was un­der­mined for clos­er scruti­ny be­cause SOME­THING flagged it ‘on the record,’” Row­ley wrote.

He sug­gest­ed that in­for­mal sur­veil­lance could have played a role: “It is pos­si­ble to in­voke sur­veil­lance on per­sons through the ex­is­tence of day-to-day con­tact/re­la­tion­ships WITH­OUT ANY­THING BE­ING PUT ‘ON THE RECORD.’”

Row­ley said he knows some would dis­miss or doubt his ac­count, but added, “There are those who know what ac­tu­al­ly trig­gered this un­savoury event at VC Bird air­port im­mi­gra­tion dept.”

He  in­voked for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Er­ic Williams:

“This is a fair­ly ac­cu­rate de­scrip­tion of our so­ci­ety, one that I served, con­tin­ue to love and still feel im­mense­ly proud of, but as Dr Williams, the Fa­ther of the Na­tion once was dri­ven to say: ‘We too have our raga­muffins.’ Make no mis­take, it must be raga­muf­fin time.”

Row­ley first made the claim on Mon­day, say­ing im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers in An­tigua scanned his pass­port, de­tained him briefly, and through lat­er checks Row­ley found out he was on a watch list. 

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice re­spond­ed that same day, con­firm­ing that Row­ley was not on any IN­TER­POL watch list or red no­tice. The TTPS said it had sub­mit­ted no in­for­ma­tion to IN­TER­POL that could jus­ti­fy such a list­ing and that there was “no record, di­rec­tive, or pro­ce­dur­al ac­tion” sup­port­ing any claim of lo­cal in­volve­ment.

It al­so de­nied any po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence, call­ing it­self an “in­de­pen­dent and apo­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion.”