Minister says SoE detainees may still face charges

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says al­though most of the de­tainees held un­der the State of Emer­gency (SoE) were re­leased af­ter it end­ed, it does not mean they can’t be charged in the fu­ture.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress head of­fice in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said of the 182 peo­ple de­tained un­der SoE or­ders, at least 43 were charged.

Asked about the po­lice’s in­abil­i­ty to con­vert in­for­ma­tion in­to ev­i­dence in or­der to war­rant charges against the re­main­ing 139 ex-de­tainees, Alexan­der said the in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.

“In­ves­ti­ga­tions are not stalled. So, per­sons may have been re­leased, but per­sons will even­tu­al­ly be charged as ev­i­dence comes for­ward. We have done, the min­istry has done every­thing nec­es­sary un­der the law, with the guid­ance of the law, to put to­geth­er or to de­tain per­sons as you would have seen,” he said.

Among those re­leased were men held in re­la­tion to the al­leged plot to mur­der De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge. Asked if there were any con­cerns over Sturge’s safe­ty and that of cit­i­zens in gen­er­al, Alexan­der said, “What I can as­sure you is that Mr Sturge is good. He’s safe at this time. How­ev­er, the in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue.

“Some of the per­sons did not reach the thresh­old that charges were laid im­me­di­ate­ly. How­ev­er, that doesn’t take away the fact that charges may even­tu­al­ly be laid. The Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, to­geth­er with the TTPS and oth­ers, we will do what­ev­er we have to, to pro­tect our cit­i­zens. Again, this will be done by any law­ful means nec­es­sary.”

The for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer said while there is no lack of re­sources with­in the po­lice ser­vice to pur­sue the mat­ters against the for­mer de­tainees, he could not say how much more time might be need­ed to se­cure ev­i­dence in or­der to charge them.

Asked if the po­lice may need an­oth­er SoE to gath­er the re­quired ev­i­dence, Alexan­der re­it­er­at­ed the state­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that the Gov­ern­ment was pre­pared to do so if the need arose.

“I sup­port what my Prime Min­is­ter al­ready said, if the crim­i­nals can­not be­have them­selves, then maybe we have to force them to. The crim­i­nals are not more im­por­tant than our good cit­i­zens in Trinidad and To­ba­go. So, if the good cit­i­zens want to live in peace, and the crim­i­nals cause them not to, then we must re­move some­one from some­where. We in­tend to live here as good, law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, so then, the crim­i­nals might be the prob­lem.”

Af­ter the SoE end­ed on Sat­ur­day, in­mates at Teteron Bar­racks, which be­came an of­fi­cial prison dur­ing the SoE, be­gan a hunger strike de­mand­ing that they be re­turned to the “reg­u­lar” pris­ons.

Ac­cus­ing prison and po­lice of­fi­cials of em­ploy­ing “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare tac­tics” to break them, the 11 in­mates still at Teteron Bar­racks called on the Gov­ern­ment to re­turn them to reg­u­lar de­ten­tion.

Ques­tioned about this, Alexan­der said, “As soon as things are com­plet­ed in a par­tic­u­lar place, and all is well, peo­ple might re­turn. How­ev­er, re­mem­ber, there are per­sons, there are ar­eas that was des­ig­nat­ed as pris­ons.”