Al-Rawi questions why Alexander needs US list to identify

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi is ques­tion­ing why Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der ap­pears to be re­ly­ing on a list from the Unit­ed States to iden­ti­fy in­di­vid­u­als al­leged­ly in­volved in drug traf­fick­ing and or­gan­ised crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Speak­ing at an Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi said that while in­tel­li­gence-shar­ing with the US is rou­tine, it rais­es se­ri­ous ques­tions if the Gov­ern­ment does not al­ready pos­sess sim­i­lar in­for­ma­tion through its own se­cu­ri­ty and in­tel­li­gence net­works.

His com­ments fol­low a news­pa­per re­port stat­ing that the US had shared a list of in­di­vid­u­als sus­pect­ed of in­volve­ment in drug traf­fick­ing, car­tel ac­tiv­i­ty, il­le­gal firearms and vi­o­lent crime with Alexan­der.

“You mean to tell me that Roger Alexan­der, af­ter three pe­ri­ods of emer­gency, two states of emer­gency, does not have a list of his own sup­plied to him by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice?” Al-Rawi asked.

He fur­ther con­tend­ed that dur­ing pre­vi­ous states of emer­gency, law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties de­tained sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als iden­ti­fied as gang lead­ers, sug­gest­ing that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice al­ready has in­tel­li­gence on or­gan­ised crim­i­nal net­works.

“If they were de­tained, the rea­son in the de­ten­tion or­ders is that they were gang lead­ers,” Al-Rawi said. “So you mean to tell me Roger Alexan­der didn’t have that list?”

The for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al al­so raised the is­sue of Alexan­der’s past work as a de­fence at­tor­ney, ques­tion­ing whether that his­to­ry could cre­ate com­pli­ca­tions in deal­ing with in­di­vid­u­als he may have pre­vi­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ed.

Al-Rawi al­so said in­tel­li­gence lists from for­eign part­ners are not un­usu­al, not­ing that dur­ing his tenure as at­tor­ney gen­er­al, he reg­u­lar­ly re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from the US con­cern­ing sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ists and oth­er in­di­vid­u­als flagged un­der in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty frame­works.

He point­ed to long­stand­ing in­tel­li­gence co­op­er­a­tion be­tween T&T and US agen­cies such as the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion, the Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Bu­reau of Al­co­hol, To­bac­co, Firearms and Ex­plo­sives.

How­ev­er, he ques­tioned the struc­ture of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty over­sight in T&T, point­ing out that un­der the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency Act, the min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is sup­posed to over­see the coun­try’s in­tel­li­gence agency.

Ac­cord­ing to Al-Rawi, that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty cur­rent­ly falls un­der At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie rather than Alexan­der.

He urged mem­bers of the me­dia to ques­tion whether US au­thor­i­ties are di­rect­ly shar­ing in­tel­li­gence with Alexan­der and, if not, why that might be the case.

He al­so asked if in­tel­li­gence in­for­ma­tion is be­ing shared with Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge.

Al-Rawi fur­ther ques­tioned why Alexan­der was not in­volved in dis­cus­sions linked to the “Shield of the Amer­i­c­as” ini­tia­tive, say­ing the min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for home­land se­cu­ri­ty should be cen­tral to in­ter­na­tion­al ef­forts to com­bat or­gan­ised crime.

“If we are tak­ing the fight against crim­i­nal­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go se­ri­ous­ly, how on God’s earth could we be leav­ing out Roger Alexan­der?” he asked.