Death threats and assassination plots against T&T’s leaders

In March this year, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie warned that threats against the Prime Min­is­ter, in­clud­ing those post­ed on­line, will be treat­ed se­ri­ous­ly un­der the law.

“In oth­er ter­ri­to­ries, you are shot for that,” the AG said, stand­ing by the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to de­tain in­di­vid­u­als for so­cial me­dia posts dur­ing the pre­vi­ous SoE.

As the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed, 52, and his wife Genevieve deep­ened re­cent­ly, new in­for­ma­tion sur­faced that the cou­ple was ar­rest­ed on June 24 at their Bayshore, West­moor­ings, home in con­nec­tion with the of­fence of con­spir­a­cy to mur­der.

Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) were is­sued for the Hadeeds and rel­a­tive Star Sab­ga, stat­ing their de­ten­tions were re­lat­ed to an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an al­leged as­sas­si­na­tion plot.

The cou­ple lost their bid to se­cure their free­dom on Tues­day be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad, who re­ject­ed their ap­pli­ca­tion to be re­leased pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of a ju­di­cial re­view law­suit over the PDOs is­sued against them.

This week, Guardian Me­dia looks at threats to pub­lic of­fi­cials and their even­tu­al out­comes.

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­[email protected]

When 44-year-old Olive Green-Jack was de­tained in No­vem­ber 2025 for call­ing on Venezuela to at­tack Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at her pri­vate res­i­dence in South Trinidad, the case quick­ly at­tract­ed lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion.

Many ex­pect­ed swift ac­tion in this high-pro­file mat­ter, which sparked wide­spread de­bate over the bound­aries of free speech and the lim­its of po­lit­i­cal dis­sent.

Five months af­ter Green-Jack’s re­lease on Jan­u­ary 30, her hus­band, Cliff Green, 61, has con­firmed that no charges have been laid against his wife over the threat.

“No charges have been laid. No charge at all. She just came out, and that was about it,” Green told Guardian Me­dia last Thurs­day dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view.

He said that af­ter serv­ing 81 days at the Women’s Prison in Arou­ca, his wife has stopped post­ing any­thing on so­cial me­dia.

Af­ter be­ing freed, Green-Jack had told Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view at her Diego Mar­tin home that she had learnt her les­son and was sor­ry for putting Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s life in dan­ger.

Green-Jack was de­tained un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions 2025.

The de­ten­tion or­der, signed on No­vem­ber 12, 2025, stat­ed that Green-Jack “made and pub­lished pub­lic posts and/or com­ments on so­cial me­dia ad­dressed to the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment in an at­tempt to in­flu­ence pub­lic opin­ion in a man­ner like­ly to be prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty.”

The or­der added that the post and com­ments in­vit­ed vi­o­lence against Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the Gov­ern­ment of T&T and mem­bers of the pub­lic by Venezuela and/or ex­ter­nal per­sons, which re­vealed “an im­mi­nent threat to pub­lic safe­ty.”

A moth­er of three, Green-Jack was de­tained af­ter she cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia a pho­to­graph of the Prime Min­is­ter’s pri­vate res­i­dence, ac­com­pa­nied by a post urg­ing the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment to “tar­get” the home.

Green-Jack made the post at a time when Venezue­lan politi­cians were tak­ing is­sue with the Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port of US mil­i­tary ac­tion in the re­gion against al­leged nar­co-traf­fick­ers, which Cara­cas said was a ruse to in­vade Venezuela. Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter and Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath had come out in full sup­port of Green-Jack’s de­ten­tion, say­ing the ac­tion was nec­es­sary to pro­tect the PM and oth­er pub­lic of­fi­cials from tar­get­ed threats.

Last No­vem­ber, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro in­formed the pub­lic that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice had re­port­ed an in­crease in on­line posts con­tain­ing threats of vi­o­lence aimed at pub­lic of­fi­cials.

Gue­var­ro ad­vised that no per­son is per­mit­ted to in­cite vi­o­lence, in­tim­i­date oth­ers or use dig­i­tal plat­forms to is­sue threats.

His com­ments fol­lowed the de­ten­tion of Alian­na Sama­roo, 30, for in­cit­ing vi­o­lence against Per­sad-Bisses­sar and mem­bers of her Gov­ern­ment on Tik­Tok last Oc­to­ber.

Sama­roo was ar­rest­ed at her Phyl­lis Lane, Ch­agua­nas, apart­ment for post­ing a video on so­cial me­dia, call­ing on then Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro to kill the PM and Cab­i­net mem­bers.

Af­ter spend­ing a week in de­ten­tion, the moth­er of two was charged con­trary to Reg­u­la­tion 11 of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions 2025.

Sama­roo plead­ed guilty be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Maris­sa Gomez and was put on a $20,000 bond to keep the peace and be of good be­hav­iour for three years.

When she com­pletes the bond, no con­vic­tion will be record­ed against her.

If she com­mits an­oth­er crim­i­nal of­fence, she will re­turn to court for re­sen­tenc­ing.

The 1990 coup was not a threat, it was a vi­o­lent at­tempt­ed over­throw of the Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment by the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen. Then prime min­is­ter Arthur N R Robin­son was shot in the leg and beat­en on Ju­ly 27, 1990. Af­ter six days, the Ja­maat sur­ren­dered af­ter se­cur­ing an amnesty agree­ment. While the gov­ern­ment tried the in­sur­gents for trea­son, the amnesty was ul­ti­mate­ly up­held by the courts.

Five years lat­er, in 1995, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Sel­wyn Richard­son was as­sas­si­nat­ed. He was gunned down in the dri­ve­way of his Cas­cade home. That crime re­mains un­solved.

But for more than two decades, the shad­ow of death threats has loomed over the na­tion’s top po­lit­i­cal fig­ures, tar­get­ing prime min­is­ters and op­po­si­tion lead­ers alike.

Yet de­spite the alarm these threats spark, the le­gal out­comes have been sur­pris­ing­ly mut­ed, of­ten leav­ing the pub­lic in the dark and the sus­pects with lit­tle more than a slap on the wrist.

The ori­gins of these un­set­tling in­ci­dents trace back to 2002, when it was re­port­ed in the me­dia that Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) leader and for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, along with for­mer sen­a­tor and gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Car­los John, had their lives threat­ened.

This mo­ment marked the be­gin­ning of a trou­bling pat­tern that con­tin­ued in the years ahead.

John, in a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, could not re­call re­ceiv­ing a death threat 24 years ago while he served as St Joseph MP.

“Threat­ened by whom? I don’t even rec­ol­lect the sit­u­a­tion.”

At no point in time was John ques­tioned by the po­lice re­gard­ing the threat.

“I would have re­mem­bered that.”

John said he could not re­mem­ber Pan­day be­ing threat­ened as well.

Sev­en years lat­er, in Ju­ly of 2009, then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning re­vealed at a pub­lic meet­ing that an “un­named or­gan­i­sa­tion” had tried to car­ry out a plot to kill him.

Man­ning said his wife, Hazel, who was then the lo­cal gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, was told of the plan to as­sas­si­nate him in Ju­ly of 2008.

He said a marked po­lice ve­hi­cle tried to “peel off” one of the cars from his se­cu­ri­ty de­tail as he and Hazel were go­ing to the gym.

The in­ci­dent, Man­ning said, hap­pened three days short of the 18th an­niver­sary of the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, which he did not dis­close to the pub­lic.

His per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty had to be height­ened.

“For­tu­nate­ly for us, my dear friends, we did not re­port it at the time. Had it been re­port­ed, I as­sure you there would have been blood­shed that morn­ing, and cer­tain peo­ple would have been killed. There is no ques­tion about it,” Man­ning said dur­ing a vis­it to Des­per­a­does Pan Yard in Laven­tille.

It was the third time Man­ning came out pub­licly with a re­port­ed death threat, hav­ing done so in No­vem­ber 2003 and again in Ju­ly 2005, dur­ing an­oth­er an­niver­sary of the coup.

The na­tion ques­tioned the ris­ing threats to Man­ning’s life, and there has been no com­ment from the po­lice on the state of these in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

In 2010, dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign that even­tu­al­ly end­ed with then op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­com­ing the coun­try’s first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter, po­lice in­ves­ti­gat­ed an al­leged $5 mil­lion con­tract to as­sas­si­nate Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Her Toy­ota Pra­do was hi­jacked at gun­point while be­ing used by her niece and dri­ver. Po­lice said at the time they had no ev­i­dence that the rob­bery was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed. Au­thor­i­ties lat­er said there was no ev­i­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate the claim of a hit on Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

In No­vem­ber 2011, PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar had re­vealed there was an as­sas­si­na­tion plot against her and three of her Cab­i­net min­is­ters.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the plot might have been “per­son­al in some re­spect,” but was aimed at to­tal­ly desta­bil­is­ing T&T.

She blamed the al­leged plot on crim­i­nal el­e­ments act­ing in reprisal for a State of Emer­gency she de­clared in Au­gust of 2011.

The threats sent the pro­tec­tive ser­vices on high alert.

This shock­ing rev­e­la­tion led for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to ques­tion the an­nounce­ment of the death threat, stat­ing the UNC gov­ern­ment had de­vel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion in a short time for be­ing un­able to speak the truth.

“When I heard the re­port, I was very much tak­en aback, hav­ing been a prime min­is­ter my­self. I was very sur­prised that the prime min­is­ter would have made a sto­ry like that. These things hap­pen from day to day. Al­most every day, re­al­ly, you get some kind of re­port. I’ve had many of those re­ports in my time. And I asked my­self, was the prime min­is­ter speak­ing the truth?”

Fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, 17 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed on the al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate Per­sad-Bisses­sar, then at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, and then min­is­ters Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and Chan­dresh Shar­ma.

Ar­ti­cles in Reuters and the Toron­to Star in De­cem­ber 2011 had re­port­ed that the au­thor­i­ties had freed the sus­pects, among them a po­lice of­fi­cer, two for­mer po­lice of­fi­cers and a Mus­lim schol­ar, due to lack of ev­i­dence.

Last Thurs­day, Shar­ma, who served as lo­cal gov­ern­ment min­is­ter in Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s first term in of­fice, said he re­mem­bered the threat and was ques­tioned by the po­lice about his where­abouts and safe­ty af­ter the UNC regime had ob­tained high-lev­el in­tel­li­gence.

Asked if he knew the out­come of the po­lice’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Shar­ma said, “We would say when the threat is no longer there. We are not giv­en the his­to­ry. We are not say­ing they were held or hold ... be­cause that is not our busi­ness.”

He said that when an in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­veals that a per­son is no longer a sus­pect, they are re­leased.

The fol­low­ing year, in 2012, Nico­lai Mar­fan, 23, ap­peared be­fore a Port-of-Spain court charged with threat­en­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s life.

Mar­fan, a porter with the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, was ac­cused of mak­ing a phone call to of­fi­cers of the E-999 Rapid Re­sponse unit, stat­ing he was go­ing to kill the PM.

He plead­ed not guilty be­fore the then Chief Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar and was placed on $75,000 bail.

In Jan­u­ary of 2013, Mar­fan of Char­ford Court, Port-of-Spain, reap­peared in court for the fourth time, but the pros­e­cu­tor in­formed Ay­ers-Cae­sar that a State at­tor­ney was yet to be ap­point­ed to pros­e­cute the mat­ter.

The court heard that the file was yet to be sent to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, Roger Gas­pard.

Mar­fan was sched­uled to reap­pear in court on March 19.

How­ev­er, a search on Mar­fan’s court mat­ter showed no new in­for­ma­tion on the case.

Last Wednes­day, Guardian Me­dia sent a voice note to Gas­pard seek­ing an up­date on this court mat­ter, but there was no re­sponse.

At a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Bel­mont in 2019, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said that on two oc­ca­sions, as­sas­sins were giv­en the job to kill him be­fore the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

He re­vealed the de­tails of the planned killing while speak­ing to par­ty sup­port­ers.

“They were so des­per­ate to re­move me from the line­up in 2015 that on two oc­ca­sions they hired a killer to kill me.”

The first killer re­fused and de­ter­mined that some­body had to know this, and told a gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial.

The po­lice were in­formed.

Row­ley said when they were deal­ing with that, they went and found an­oth­er one.

“He, too, re­fused. And by this time, Spe­cial Branch was in­volved, and Spe­cial Branch knew about it. There is ho­n­our among thieves in this coun­try. It ap­pears as though there is ho­n­our among killers, too,” Row­ley had said.

On the eve of the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion, Row­ley said he was in the hands of Spe­cial Branch and his pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty.

He had to be shut­tled from his home to meet­ings and back.

“In fact, there were places they were telling me I couldn’t go; it was too dan­ger­ous,” Row­ley had stat­ed.

As to who made the threats or if any­one was charged, this nev­er be­came pub­lic knowl­edge.

In April 2020, Nico­lai Hug­gins, 23, of Point Fortin, was sent to jail for threat­en­ing then-PM Row­ley. In a so­cial me­dia post on April 4, Hug­gins threat­ened to kill Row­ley and used ob­scen­i­ties to­wards him.

Four days lat­er, Hug­gins was ar­rest­ed and charged by Sergeant Ali un­der Sec­tion 106 of the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act.

Hug­gins ap­peared be­fore Point Fortin Mag­is­trate Ali­cia Chankar, where he en­tered a guilty plea and was sen­tenced to 30 days’ hard labour.

In De­cem­ber of 2023, Ian Sookram was sen­tenced to 14 days’ sim­ple im­pris­on­ment by Cou­va Mag­is­trate Alexan­der Prince for al­so threat­en­ing Row­ley and then po­lice com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

The court heard that Sookram called the E999 emer­gency hot­line on No­vem­ber 25, 2023, to threat­en Row­ley and Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

He had threat­ened to cut off the heads of the prime min­is­ter and the top cop.

Sookram of Cen­tral was lat­er ar­rest­ed and charged with mis­use of the tele­phone, con­trary to Sec­tion 106(a) of the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act.