Griffith: No intelligence to show Dana Seetahal’s life was in danger

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith has pushed back against claims raised in Par­lia­ment about the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the 2014 mur­der of Dana See­ta­hal, SC, stat­ing that dur­ing his tenure, no re­ports ever reached the coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty lead­er­ship in­di­cat­ing she was the tar­get of an as­sas­si­na­tion plot.

Grif­fith served as min­is­ter from 2012 to 2015.

His com­ments came af­ter De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge ref­er­enced See­ta­hal’s killing dur­ing a de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day.

Dur­ing the de­bate, Sturge ar­gued that au­thor­i­ties failed to act de­ci­sive­ly de­spite in­tel­li­gence sug­gest­ing See­ta­hal’s life was un­der threat. He told the cham­ber that in­ves­ti­ga­tors had mon­i­tored com­mu­ni­ca­tions linked to crim­i­nal el­e­ments but did not in­ter­vene be­fore the killing.

“Dana See­ta­hal al­so knew she was go­ing to get killed,” Sturge said. “They lis­tened, and they lis­tened, and they lis­tened, and now she’s not here.”

Re­spond­ing to those re­marks, Grif­fith ex­plained he was not ques­tion­ing the De­fence Min­is­ter’s state­ment but could on­ly ad­dress the pe­ri­od when he served as min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty un­der the ad­min­is­tra­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“What I can con­firm is that at no time dur­ing my tenure as min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty were any re­ports giv­en to us about Dana See­ta­hal be­ing a tar­get,” Grif­fith stat­ed.

He stressed that dur­ing that pe­ri­od, the gov­ern­ment nev­er ig­nored re­quests for pro­tec­tion or de­clined to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.

“At no time did we ig­nore re­quests for her pro­tec­tion, and at no time did we refuse to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures to pro­tect her as re­quest­ed,” Grif­fith stat­ed.

He fur­ther out­lined how the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act op­er­ates, ex­plain­ing that on­ly three of­fi­cials are au­tho­rised to re­quest in­ter­cepts.

“In fact, af­ter the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act was passed, on­ly three per­sons had au­tho­ri­sa­tion to re­quest in­ter­cept—the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, the Di­rec­tor of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency, and the Chief of De­fence Staff,” Grif­fith stat­ed.

He added that it would have been im­prop­er for those of­fi­cials to in­form politi­cians about in­di­vid­u­als whose com­mu­ni­ca­tions were be­ing in­ter­cept­ed.

Op­po­si­tion MP for Port of Spain North/St Ann’s West Stu­art Young al­so ob­ject­ed dur­ing the par­lia­men­tary de­bate, cau­tion­ing against sug­ges­tions that min­is­ters would have had ac­cess to in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

See­ta­hal, a se­nior coun­sel and for­mer in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor, was am­bushed and shot short­ly af­ter mid­night on May 4, 2014, along Hamil­ton Hold­er Street in Wood­brook while dri­ving home to her apart­ment at One Wood­brook Place af­ter leav­ing the Ma Pau Casi­no on Ari­api­ta Av­enue.

An au­top­sy re­vealed she had been shot five times.

On Ju­ly 25, 2015, sev­er­al men were charged with the mur­der, in­clud­ing Ra­jaee Ali, Ish­mael Ali, Hamid Ali, De­vaughn Cum­mings, Ri­car­do Stew­art, Earl Richards, Stephan Cum­mings, Kevin Parkin­son, Le­ston Gon­za­les, Ro­get Bouch­er, and Gareth Wise­man. (See more on Page 11)