As Bar­ba­dos At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Dale Mar­shall yes­ter­day sought to ex­plain to his Par­lia­ment how blind­sided both he and Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley were on the Brent Thomas fi­as­co, he on­ly pro­vid­ed us with more rea­son to be­lieve the gov­ern­ments and state au­thor­i­ties of T&T and Bar­ba­dos act­ed in­com­pe­tent­ly.

AG Mar­shall told his Par­lia­ment that the first time ei­ther he or Ms Mot­t­ley heard about the mat­ter was when it ap­peared in the T&T me­dia last week, a full six months af­ter Thomas was de­port­ed from Bar­ba­dos to T&T.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has al­ready tak­en a sim­i­lar po­si­tion, be­ing un­aware un­til re­cent­ly that this hap­pened in Oc­to­ber last year.

Af­ter Mar­shall's ad­dress, we can on­ly be left to won­der how such a ma­jor slip-up hap­pened un­der the noses of coun­tries' lead­ers.

It is sim­ply not enough to seek to ex­on­er­ate one­self and pass blame when the buck stops with those charged with up­hold­ing the rights of Cari­com cit­i­zens.

Fright­en­ing­ly now, from AG Mar­shall's ex­pla­na­tion, we are left to be­lieve a T&T cit­i­zen can be de­tained, ar­rest­ed and de­port­ed from his coun­try on­ly on the re­quest of a T&T po­lice of­fi­cer flash­ing ar­rest war­rants to Bar­ba­dos po­lice.

At no time, AG Mar­shall said, was an ex­tra­di­tion re­quest made, some­thing he agreed "fell short of ac­cept­able le­gal norms."

This is a se­ri­ous breach with far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions that high­light the ab­sence of prop­er checks and bal­ances.

How to be­gin with, could the T&TPS fail to pre­vent some­one from leav­ing the coun­try, on­ly to seek to have him de­port­ed? That such an op­er­a­tion could then be car­ried out out­side the knowl­edge of Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials is an in­dict­ment on both na­tions.

AG Mar­shall, recog­nis­ing the neg­a­tive im­pact this mat­ter can have on his coun­try, has al­ready re­ceived re­ports from his Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, the Cari­com Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (Cari­com Im­pacs), the Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tem (RSS) and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

The re­ports sug­gest T&T po­lice of­fi­cers con­tact­ed Cari­com Im­pacs seek­ing to ini­ti­ate the process, fol­low­ing which Cari­com Im­pacs con­tact­ed the Bar­ba­dos po­lice, be­fore po­lice of­fi­cers from the two na­tions con­versed on the mat­ter. The RSS was then asked to pro­vide an air­craft that flew T&T po­lice of­fi­cers from T&T to Bar­ba­dos for the han­dover of Mr Thomas at the Grant­ley Adams In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. But nei­ther Cari­com Im­pacs nor the RSS are laws un­to them­selves and an­swer to the Cari­com Coun­cil for Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Law En­force­ment, which com­pris­es Cari­com Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ters.

That Coun­cil, in turn, re­ports to the lead Cari­com Head of Gov­ern­ment re­spon­si­ble for crime and se­cu­ri­ty, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who was hold­ing that po­si­tion in Oc­to­ber last year when the op­er­a­tion took place.

It is as­tound­ing, there­fore, that both Cari­com Im­pacs and the RSS could have un­der­tak­en a cross-bor­der 'ab­duc­tion' and de­por­ta­tion with­out in­form­ing those up the chain of com­mand in both coun­tries.

The rab­bit hole has got­ten a lit­tle deep­er, as AG Mar­shall's ad­dress has on­ly pre­sent­ed us with more ques­tions about the func­tion­ing of our se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies and about who is telling the truth about the op­er­a­tion.

Tak­ing the words of ca­lyp­son­ian Rod­er­ick 'Chucky' Gor­don in his 2023 com­po­si­tion, the 'maths is sim­ply not math­s­ing'.