Ex-AG urges discretion with info on threats to public officials

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Garvin Nicholas says threats against pub­lic of­fi­cials are not un­usu­al, adding that this is one of the rea­sons gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials are pro­vid­ed with se­cu­ri­ty de­tails up­on tak­ing of­fice.

How­ev­er, he said while his­tor­i­cal­ly, such threats have rarely been act­ed up­on, the in­for­ma­tion should still be treat­ed with dis­cre­tion.

Nicholas made the com­ments on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, while re­spond­ing to re­ports of death threats against the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) and his daugh­ters, as well as claims of mur­der plots tar­get­ing the Prime Min­is­ter and oth­er Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

“There would be threats made. There would be things said about them pri­vate­ly or pub­licly that may cause con­cern. But in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we don’t have a his­to­ry of go­ing af­ter pub­lic fig­ures in that way, to kill, to hurt, to maim. It’s usu­al­ly a war of words.”

He said if he were still AG, threats against him would not be pub­li­cised in the man­ner they are now. In­stead, he said, he would in­form the Spe­cial Branch, which would in­ves­ti­gate it and de­ter­mine if any ac­tion was nec­es­sary.

“I think that if every time there is a threat made or an al­leged threat made against you, you go pub­lic, what you do is ac­tu­al­ly cause more chaos in so­ci­ety. So these things, as far as I’m con­cerned, should be han­dled with­in the closed in­for­ma­tion and in­tel­li­gence.”

Nicholas said threats should be han­dled dis­creet­ly.

“But you can’t just be go­ing out to the pub­lic every Mon­day morn­ing and say­ing that there’s been a threat against me. Now, with re­gards to the threat that I saw re­port­ed against the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties (Bar­ry Padarath), where it stat­ed that some­body in­car­cer­at­ed gave ev­i­dence about a for­mer min­is­ter putting out a hit on him. That con­cerned me, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the fact that we’ve seen peo­ple ar­rest­ed with PDO’s for less and I haven’t ac­tu­al­ly seen the po­lice move on that.”

It was re­port­ed that Padarath’s life was un­der threat af­ter an al­leged gang­ster re­port­ed­ly gave a state­ment claim­ing he had been ap­proached by a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter to kill him.

Nicholas said, log­i­cal­ly, the fact that noth­ing came of the al­le­ga­tion was it­self a cause for con­cern.

ICC should be strength­ened

Turn­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs, Nicholas al­so weighed in on the Unit­ed States’ bid to dis­man­tle the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court (ICC), say­ing the in­sti­tu­tion should in­stead be strength­ened.

His com­ments came af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clined to com­ment on the is­sue.

The mat­ter arose af­ter US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio an­nounced that the US in­tends to dis­man­tle the Hague-based In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court, ar­gu­ing that it threat­ens Amer­i­can sov­er­eign­ty and could ex­pose US mil­i­tary per­son­nel, bor­der agents and elect­ed of­fi­cials to po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed pros­e­cu­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports, the US al­so plans to pres­sure coun­tries to re­ject the ICC’s au­thor­i­ty, with pos­si­ble con­se­quences for those that refuse, in­clud­ing sanc­tions, visa re­stric­tions and height­ened scruti­ny.

For­mer prime min­is­ter and pres­i­dent ANR Robin­son spear­head­ed the glob­al ini­tia­tive in 1989 that re­vived ef­forts to es­tab­lish a per­ma­nent in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal court.

Nicholas, who served as one of the at­tor­neys gen­er­al dur­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s first term as prime min­is­ter be­tween 2010 and 2015, said if the US and oth­er larg­er coun­tries with­draw from the ICC while small­er na­tions re­main sub­ject to its ju­ris­dic­tion, it would ex­pose a lev­el of bias that could not be ig­nored.

“I think that the ICC should be strength­ened be­cause it plays a very, very im­por­tant role in hold­ing peo­ple to ac­count. If it is that the ma­jor al­leged per­pe­tra­tors do not sub­ject them­selves to the rul­ings or to the ju­ris­dic­tion of the court, then what use is the court?” Nicholas said.

Re­fer­ring to claims that the US breached in­ter­na­tion­al law dur­ing the lead-up to ef­forts to re­move Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro—dur­ing which more than 100 peo­ple, in­clud­ing two men be­lieved to be from Trinidad and To­ba­go, were re­port­ed­ly killed—Nicholas said in­ter­na­tion­al law ap­pears to have lost its force.

He warned that if one coun­try is al­lowed to act with­out con­se­quence, oth­ers will even­tu­al­ly fol­low, cre­at­ing an in­creas­ing­ly chaot­ic world.

Nicholas said the Gov­ern­ment now has an im­por­tant de­ci­sion to make—one that must take in­to ac­count the coun­try’s long-term fu­ture rather than sim­ply re­spond­ing to cur­rent events.