I am not afraid! Defence Minister responds to release of SoE detainee held for plotting to kill Govt officials

Sto­ries by

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge says he is not afraid for his life af­ter a man, who was de­tained un­der the State of Emer­gency (SoE) for a death threat to a Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial, was re­leased ear­li­er this month.

Speak­ing at a me­dia brief­ing at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas, yes­ter­day, Sturge con­firmed he was the Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial un­der threat. Asked if he was fear­ful for his life, giv­en what tran­spired with the de­ten­tion of in­di­vid­u­als dur­ing the SoE, Sturge said no.

“I’m not afraid. We all die. We all will get that chance, and if you give me a choice be­tween can­cer and an as­sas­si­na­tion, I’ll choose an as­sas­si­na­tion. So, I’m not afraid.”

How­ev­er, Sturge said the mat­ter is not over, as the sus­pect can be re-ar­rest­ed.

“It’s a bit pre­ma­ture to say that he’s not go­ing to be charged. I don’t know. What I can say is that a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter was writ­ten, and it was act­ed up­on mere­ly hours be­fore the tri­bunal gave a rec­om­men­da­tion to not re­lease him. So, the tri­bunal, in essence, stat­ed that he ought not to have been re­leased.”

He added that a re­port that there was nev­er any ev­i­dence to hold the sus­pect in the first place was wrong.

“The re­port in the News­day, which sug­gest­ed that there was no ev­i­dence in the first place, that has al­so been proven to be false be­cause the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro), in essence, re­fut­ed that when he came be­fore the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil,” Sturge said.

He added that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re-ar­rest­ing the sus­pect be­fore the end of the SoE, which ends on Jan­u­ary 31, can on­ly be done if new ev­i­dence is un­earthed.

How­ev­er, Sturge’s sup­posed brava­do is not con­vinc­ing for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer Mar­vin Gon­za­les, who be­lieves the death plot was a hoax.

“That al­leged threat that the Gov­ern­ment spoke about and the TTPS, I don’t be­lieve it. I think it was a lie. It was a mon­strous lie to mis­lead the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and a way of im­pos­ing a State of Emer­gency as a crime tool, as op­posed to deal­ing with a spe­cif­ic na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty threat, be­cause up to to­day, no one was charged, and the over 100 peo­ple that were de­tained un­der emer­gency pow­ers, they have not been charged. Most of these peo­ple are go­ing to be re­leased at the end of this month,” Gon­za­les said.

Gon­za­les, how­ev­er, said that Sturge is ful­ly aware that there was nev­er any re­al threat against him, and that is why he is not afraid.

“The rea­son why he is say­ing that is per­haps he is aware that there was no re­al threat in the first place. So that’s the rea­son why he’s say­ing that. The min­is­ter is well aware that there was no re­al threat. Let me tell you this, Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge is just play­ing games,” Gon­za­les said.

Dur­ing the SoE, Dan­ny Guer­ra was one of four peo­ple, in­clud­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer, de­tained for al­leged­ly plot­ting to mur­der a Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial.

The 50-year-old, of North Oropouche Road, San­gre Grande, was or­dered to be held at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre, San­ta Rosa, Ari­ma, in No­vem­ber last year.

How­ev­er, he was re­leased on Jan­u­ary 2 af­ter a re­vo­ca­tion or­der was hand­ed down by the SoE tri­bunal.