Cop arrested in alleged plot to kill minister

A po­lice of­fi­cer from a spe­cial­ist unit is among two peo­ple ar­rest­ed yes­ter­day, af­ter a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) was is­sued for their al­leged as­so­ci­a­tion with mem­bers of an Or­gan­ised Crime Group (OCG).

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the ar­rests were con­nect­ed to the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to busi­ness­man Dan­ny Guer­ra, who was de­tained via a PDO on No­vem­ber 19 for a plot to as­sas­si­nate a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter.

Law en­force­ment of­fi­cials re­vealed the of­fi­cer was ar­rest­ed by per­son­nel from the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU), and tak­en to the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC) in San­ta Rosa, where he re­mained last night.

These lat­est ar­rests fol­lowed Guer­ra’s who was held fol­low­ing his al­leged in­volve­ment in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

And just like Guer­ra’s PDO, which was not gazetted, the po­lice of­fi­cer’s PDO is yet to be made pub­lic.

One se­nior po­lice of­fi­cial yes­ter­day de­clined to pro­vide any in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing the ar­rest, ex­cept to say, “It’s a sen­si­tive sub­ject.”

Guer­ra’s PDO, which was signed by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, ac­cused the 50-year-old of North Oropouche Road in San­gre Grande, of pos­ing a clear and present threat to pub­lic safe­ty.

The pro­pri­etor of DG Homes, a re­al es­tate com­pa­ny with hous­ing de­vel­op­ments in sev­er­al parts of the coun­try, was tak­en to the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC) in San­ta Rosa fol­low­ing his ar­rest.

Guer­ra’s son was al­so held via a PDO.

Guer­ra was al­leged to be the leader of an OCG, re­port­ed­ly in­volved in the traf­fick­ing of il­le­gal arms, mon­ey laun­der­ing and il­le­gal quar­ry­ing.

It was claimed Guer­ra, along with oth­ers, in­tend­ed to im­mi­nent­ly ex­e­cute the as­sas­si­na­tion of a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter and to es­ca­late at­tacks against ri­val gangs in pub­lic spaces us­ing high-pow­ered firearms.