Diego Martin man held for death threats against Senator

A Diego Mar­tin man is in po­lice cus­tody, as­sist­ing with in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to death threats against Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne.

Po­lice said the man is be­ing in­ter­viewed, but did not pro­vide de­tails on when he was de­tained or which unit took him in­to cus­tody.

The man is ac­cused of post­ing threat­en­ing mes­sages on Face­book, which Browne re­port­ed to po­lice on Sat­ur­day.

In a Face­book post, Browne wrote, “I have made a full re­port to the Po­lice Ser­vice based on on­line death threats made against me, and mem­bers of my fam­i­ly in the form of spe­cif­ic com­ments on my Face­book wall. I have been in­volved in the ac­tive pol­i­tics of Trinidad and To­ba­go since 2007 and have nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced any­thing like this. I am treat­ing the is­sue very se­ri­ous­ly.”

In a fol­low-up mes­sage, Browne said he ex­pects “ro­bust and swift ac­tion” in re­sponse to the threats.

Yes­ter­day, in a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia af­ter the sus­pect’s ar­rest, Browne said: “Let the law take its course.”

The Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor’s Face­book post in­clud­ed screen­shots of the threats.

One com­ment read, “Any time I see u pub­lic, I go walk up to yuh and shoot yuh in yuh head.” An­oth­er said, “I go­ing a wait out­side Par­lia­ment when I see yuh I go shoot u.” A third read, “I go send men to kill yuh chil­dren.”

The pro­file of the poster had 40 friends, two pho­tos, and no ad­di­tion­al posts. One pic­ture was up­loaded on Oc­to­ber 12. An­oth­er pro­file with the same name and sim­i­lar pho­tos had 51 friends and three posts dat­ing from 2017 to 2018.

Browne’s re­port came days af­ter the Gov­ern­ment gazetted a de­ten­tion or­der against Olive Green-Jack, who is ac­cused of in­cit­ing the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment to tar­get Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar amid ten­sions be­tween the two coun­tries.