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Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says her Cab­i­net will con­sid­er es­tab­lish­ing a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the con­tro­ver­sial ar­rest and “ab­duc­tion” of firearms deal­er Brent Thomas in Bar­ba­dos.

How­ev­er, she says the po­ten­tial cost of such an ex­er­cise will be a key fac­tor in de­ter­min­ing whether it in fact pro­ceeds.

It’s a 2022 mat­ter that was this week deemed “un­set­tling” by the Prime Min­is­ter, who sur­pris­ing­ly brought it up at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the 50th Cari­com Sum­mit in St Kitts and Nevis.

In her ad­dress, she de­scribed the in­ci­dent when Thomas was de­tained in Bar­ba­dos and re­turned to Trinidad and To­ba­go aboard a mil­i­tary air­craft as a “kid­nap­ping.”

The re­marks quick­ly drew a re­sponse from Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, who strong­ly re­ject­ed the use of the term “kid­nap­ping,” call­ing it “a scur­rilous lie and defam­a­to­ry in the ex­treme.” Mot­t­ley said of­fi­cial records show that Trinidad and To­ba­go po­lice pre­sent­ed ar­rest war­rants to their Bar­ba­di­an coun­ter­parts, who act­ed on them, mak­ing it in­ac­cu­rate to por­tray the mat­ter as a uni­lat­er­al ab­duc­tion by Bar­ba­dos au­thor­i­ties.

Thomas was ar­rest­ed as part of a firearms traf­fick­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Asked yes­ter­day for her re­sponse on the is­sue, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was care­ful to say that in her ad­dress to Cari­com, she did not sin­gle out Bar­ba­dos for blame. But she is stand­ing by what she said, say­ing it fol­lowed what the High Court ruled on the mat­ter.

“And now it is the gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos that has to use tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars from Bar­ba­dos to pay Mr Brent Thomas’ dam­ages. They ac­cept­ed li­a­bil­i­ty, the AG ac­cept­ed li­a­bil­i­ty for the ac­tions. And what more can I say? Where’s the lie then?” Per­sad-Bisses­sar asked.

In 2023, High Court Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad ex­am­ined Thomas’ con­sti­tu­tion­al claim against the State af­ter his ar­rest in Bar­ba­dos and forcible re­turn to Trinidad.

The judge found that the de­ten­tion and re­moval of Thomas from Bar­ba­dos were un­law­ful and amount­ed to an abuse of process.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has since called for a CoE in­to the mat­ter. That sug­ges­tion was put to Per­sad-Bisses­sar by Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day as she spoke out­side the Par­lia­ment.

“Those are mat­ters I want to pick up at the Cab­i­net and have dis­cus­sions. Com­mis­sion­ers’ en­quiry cost a lot of mon­ey. And you have heard me al­ready say­ing, you know, we have to use the mon­ey for the peo­ple, for de­liv­ery of goods and ser­vices and the best way we can. So, it’s some­thing we will weigh. I know there’s some of you feel that might be the on­ly way to find out what re­al­ly hap­pened, how it hap­pened.”

She added, “I look for­ward to a full dis­cus­sion in my Cab­i­net be­fore I make a pro­nounce­ment. On the one hand, it can hap­pen. On the oth­er hand, we have to weigh what you call a cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis. How much mon­ey is it go­ing to cost? Mil­lions and mil­lions, which I could use to pay for the hos­pi­tals, to pay for the schools, to pay teach­ers, to pay work­ers. We will have to wait.”

In the last 16 years, Co­Es have re­sult­ed in sig­nif­i­cant State pay­outs over vary­ing pe­ri­ods. The col­lapse of CL Fi­nan­cial and CLI­CO spanned ap­prox­i­mate­ly four years and cost the State in ex­cess of $500 mil­lion. Is­sues in­volv­ing UDe­COTT and the wider con­struc­tion sec­tor were set­tled over about 18 months, with pay­ments rang­ing be­tween $46 mil­lion and $54 mil­lion. Claims stem­ming from the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup took rough­ly three years to re­solve and amount­ed to $31.8 mil­lion. The Las Al­turas hous­ing project mat­ter last­ed close to two years and re­sult­ed in a $24.5 mil­lion pay­out, while the Paria div­ing tragedy in 2022 was set­tled in ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16 months at a cost of $15.7 mil­lion.

Mean­while, PM Mot­t­ley sug­gest­ed the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a Cari­com Ar­rest War­rant to de­ter a re­cur­rence of the Brent Thomas mat­ter.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day said such talks have not yet en­gaged her Cab­i­net but she did not seem averse to it.

“Noth­ing has been worked on at the mo­ment, so it’s some­thing that sounds like a bril­liant idea, but isn’t it in­ter­est­ing that af­ter all these years, it took a state­ment I made at the Cari­com heads be­fore this ex­pla­na­tion was forth­com­ing. That is very in­ter­est­ing.”

Out­side of the Red House yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia asked Op­po­si­tion MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les for his thoughts on a pos­si­ble CoE in­to the Thomas mat­ter.

“I don’t think it is a bad idea be­cause there is a lot of mis­in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic on that Brent Thomas is­sue.”

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les said he hopes the CoE will not turn in­to a po­lit­i­cal witch-hunt.

Gon­za­les was part of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion dur­ing the in­ci­dent in 2022. He told Guardian Me­dia he is stand­ing by their ac­tions.

“The then Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty did what he was sup­posed to do, you had the arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice li­ais­ing with their coun­ter­parts in the re­gion. Noth­ing was at the dis­pos­al of the gov­ern­ment of the day, sug­gest­ing in any way that the for­mer gov­ern­ment should be con­cerned about any­thing with any min­is­ter or any state of­fi­cial with re­spect to this mat­ter.”

When re­mind­ed that the High Court had an is­sue with how it was han­dled,

Gon­za­les re­spond­ed, “I re­spect the court’s judg­ment on this and that’s all I am pre­pared to say.”

Mean­while, re­gion­al po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Pe­ter Wick­ham says the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion to raise the Thomas ar­rest dur­ing her Cari­com ad­dress was in­ap­pro­pri­ate.

Wick­ham be­lieves bring­ing the case to a re­gion­al fo­rum blurred the line be­tween diplo­ma­cy and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. He says Bar­ba­dos’ lead­er­ship had no di­rect in­volve­ment, and dis­putes like these have oc­curred be­fore with­out threat­en­ing Cari­com’s uni­ty.

“My sense is that there was a lot in the Prime Min­is­ter’s (Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s) com­ments that breached those rules of en­gage­ment. I mean, she dragged is­sues which were na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters, like the Brent Thomas mat­ter, in­to this in a way that was en­tire­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate. And then it was a sense where you are stand­ing as a mem­ber of a fam­i­ly, you’re stand­ing on the side of the house, and you’re throw­ing rocks in.”

He added, “First meet­ing that you’ve at­tend­ed ever, you’re at­tend­ing large­ly be­cause Mar­co Ru­bio is there. You go to the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, you make re­marks. So when your fam­i­ly sits down to have a con­ver­sa­tion the next day, you dis­ap­pear back to Port-of-Spain.”