Sturge claims Seetahal knew of plot to kill her

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge in­voked the 2014 mur­der of Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal dur­ing de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency, ar­gu­ing that au­thor­i­ties failed to act de­ci­sive­ly de­spite in­tel­li­gence sug­gest­ing her life was un­der threat.

Speak­ing in the Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go on Fri­day, Sturge claimed law en­force­ment at the time re­lied on sur­veil­lance rather than tak­ing pre­ven­ta­tive ac­tion.

“Dana See­ta­hal al­so knew she was go­ing to get killed,” Sturge said. “They lis­tened and they lis­tened and they lis­tened, and now she’s not here.”

Op­po­si­tion MP for Port of Spain North/St Ann’s West Stu­art Young im­me­di­ate­ly ob­ject­ed, telling the cham­ber that See­ta­hal was mur­dered in 2014 while the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship was in gov­ern­ment and cau­tion­ing against sug­ges­tions that min­is­ters had ac­cess to in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

“That hap­pened un­der a UNC gov­ern­ment,” Young said, adding that un­der the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act on­ly the Di­rec­tor of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the Chief of De­fence Staff can au­tho­rise in­ter­cepts.

“Min­is­ters do not get in­volved in in­ter­cepts,” Young told the cham­ber.

Ear­li­er in the de­bate, Sturge said the Gov­ern­ment would rein­tro­duce the Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill and in­sist­ed it would pass even with­out Op­po­si­tion sup­port.

“ZOSO com­ing back,” he said. “And when it come back, I want to see what you go do… no amend­ment, doh both­er with that.”

He added that the mea­sure would pass re­gard­less of re­sis­tance from the Op­po­si­tion.

“It’s go­ing to pass whether you like it or not next time,” Sturge said.

Young warned that re­peat­ed use of emer­gency pow­ers should not be used to pres­sure the pop­u­la­tion if leg­is­la­tion is re­ject­ed.

“You can’t threat­en a pop­u­la­tion with states of emer­gency,” Young said. “You can’t threat­en a pop­u­la­tion, well, I will just bring state of emer­gency af­ter state of emer­gency.”

He cau­tioned that emer­gency pow­ers should re­main a last re­sort.

“Do not al­low your­selves to be­come numb by state of emer­gency af­ter state of emer­gency,” he said. “We can­not nor­mal­ize states of emer­gency.”

Sturge de­fend­ed the use of emer­gency pow­ers and pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion, say­ing the mea­sures are in­tend­ed to stop vi­o­lence be­fore it oc­curs.

“The very first word is pre­ven­ta­tive,” he said, re­fer­ring to Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders is­sued dur­ing emer­gency pe­ri­ods.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, such mea­sures re­move dan­ger­ous in­di­vid­u­als from the sys­tem and dis­rupt their abil­i­ty to co­or­di­nate at­tacks.

“It pre­vent­ed blood­shed,” he said.

Sturge al­so ar­gued that gov­ern­ments seek­ing im­me­di­ate re­sults must fo­cus on the im­me­di­ate dri­vers of crime rather than long-term so­cial fac­tors.

“When you are deal­ing with the root caus­es of crime, you have to start 10 years in ad­vance,” he said.

“So what­ev­er you do in deal­ing with the root caus­es, you see the re­sults 10 years down the road.”

Young said the de­bate showed what he de­scribed as the Gov­ern­ment’s re­liance on emer­gency pow­ers rather than a broad­er crime strat­e­gy.

“It is clear to­day… the on­ly plan that the UNC has for fight­ing crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty is states of emer­gency,” he said.