Security probe underway at Piarco

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice has con­firmed that State se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies are in­ves­ti­gat­ing a se­cu­ri­ty-re­lat­ed mat­ter in­volv­ing a car­go air­craft at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued to­day, the TTPS said the in­ci­dent oc­curred yes­ter­day and is cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of mul­ti­ple na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, rou­tine checks car­ried out un­der the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency iden­ti­fied ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties which re­quired “im­me­di­ate pre­cau­tion­ary ac­tion.”

The TTPS said au­thor­i­ties se­cured the air­craft, ac­count­ed for the crew, and ac­ti­vat­ed all rel­e­vant na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty units in keep­ing with es­tab­lished pro­to­cols.

Guardian Me­dia pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed that au­thor­i­ties launched in­ves­ti­ga­tions af­ter an air­craft car­ry­ing ex­plo­sives land­ed at Pi­ar­co yes­ter­day night.

The Ukrain­ian air­craft, car­ry­ing a five-mem­ber Eu­ro­pean crew, was re­port­ed­ly en route to Libya and stopped in Trinidad to re­fu­el.

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials were alert­ed af­ter con­cerns were raised about the con­tents list­ed on the air­craft’s car­go man­i­fest.

Guardian Me­dia learned the crew told au­thor­i­ties the car­go con­sist­ed of in­dus­tri­al ex­plo­sives but were un­able to pro­vide fur­ther de­tails to of­fi­cials last night.

Mil­i­tary and po­lice of­fi­cers were as­signed to main­tain se­cu­ri­ty at the air­port while in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ued to­day.

Po­lice sought to as­sure the pub­lic that there was no threat to trav­ellers, air­port op­er­a­tions, or the wider na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

“At no time was there any threat to the trav­el­ling pub­lic, air­port op­er­a­tions, or the wider na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. The sit­u­a­tion re­mained calm, con­trolled, and pro­fes­sion­al­ly man­aged,” the TTPS re­lease said.

The TTPS added that the mat­ter now forms part of an ac­tive mul­ti-agency na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

It said that be­cause of re­cent in­tel­li­gence as­sess­ments and in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty oblig­a­tions, au­thor­i­ties could not re­lease fur­ther op­er­a­tional de­tails at this time.

The TTPS said all nec­es­sary mea­sures are be­ing tak­en to safe­guard Trinidad and To­ba­go and that ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion will on­ly be pro­vid­ed when it is con­sid­ered safe and ap­pro­pri­ate to do so.