Suspicious flight

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

The crew of a Ukrain­ian air­craft, which land­ed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Thurs­day night with sev­er­al tonnes of in­dus­tri­al ex­plo­sives on board, was al­lowed to leave Trinidad last night, af­ter fac­ing hours of in­ter­ro­ga­tion by lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty au­thor­i­ties.

In a re­lease last evening, the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AATT) said, “Fol­low­ing ex­ten­sive en­quiries and as­sess­ments con­duct­ed by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, it was de­ter­mined that no li­a­bil­i­ty should be at­trib­uted to the pi­lot or crew. Con­se­quent­ly, au­tho­ri­sa­tion was grant­ed and the air­craft and crew were cleared to de­part Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Pri­or to this, how­ev­er, the AATT said the air­craft and eight-mem­ber crew were de­tained by Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers, af­ter it was dis­cov­ered that the ex­plo­sives on board had not been de­clared in ac­cor­dance with es­tab­lished in­ter­na­tion­al avi­a­tion and se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols.

The air­craft, which was reg­is­tered as flight no CVK-7078, had land­ed for a tech­ni­cal re­fu­elling stop and was en route to Cape Verde, with Libya as its fi­nal des­ti­na­tion. How­ev­er, when the in­for­ma­tion dis­crep­an­cy was dis­cov­ered, the lo­cal of­fi­cials de­tained the crew.

The AATT said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter sub­se­quent­ly in­volved of­fi­cials from the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty Po­lice Force, TTPS Spe­cial Branch, AIR­COP, Unit­ed States Bor­der In­ves­ti­ga­tions and oth­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty stake­hold­ers.

Speak­ing ear­li­er on the mat­ter dur­ing yes­ter­day’s sit­ting of Par­lia­ment, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der had al­so sought to re­as­sure cit­i­zens that there was no threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

“We have the sit­u­a­tion un­der con­trol,” he said.

In a press re­lease dur­ing the day as well, the TTPS said rou­tine checks of the air­craft’s car­go had “iden­ti­fied ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties re­quir­ing im­me­di­ate pre­cau­tion­ary ac­tion.”

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials lat­er told Guardian Me­dia that lo­cal im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties were not in­formed the plane had been head­ed to T&T in the first place, and af­ter learn­ing that haz­mat car­go was con­tained there­in, they were con­cerned af­ter be­ing told just what it was.

Da­ta from the flight track­ing web­site Fligh­tradar24 re­vealed the air­craft start­ed its jour­ney in Hous­ton, Texas and made a stop in Nas­sau, Ba­hamas, be­fore land­ing in Trinidad on Thurs­day around 6.30 pm.

The TTPS con­firmed, “The air­craft was se­cured, the crew ac­count­ed for, and all rel­e­vant na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty units ac­ti­vat­ed in ac­cor­dance with es­tab­lished pro­to­cols. At no time was there any threat to the trav­el­ling pub­lic, air­port op­er­a­tions, or the wider na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.”

A se­nior of­fi­cer said the crew, in­clud­ing two pi­lots, pro­vid­ed “rea­son­able an­swers” when ques­tioned as to what the ex­plo­sives were in­tend­ed for – which in­clud­ed use in min­ing, quar­ry­ing and even un­der­wa­ter op­er­a­tions.

How­ev­er, he said giv­en re­cent de­vel­op­ments in­volv­ing threats to se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, they could not ig­nore any­thing that could prove to be detri­men­tal to the na­tion and cit­i­zens.

Guardian Me­dia learned the Antonov An-12B air­craft is owned and op­er­at­ed by Ca­vok Air – which, ac­cord­ing to an on­line search, lists it as a Ukrain­ian car­go air­line based in Kyiv.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the old South Ter­mi­nal yes­ter­day, the or­ange and black plane re­mained un­der the watch­ful eyes of the TTPS and the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF), who main­tained a con­tin­u­ous pres­ence on the tar­mac.

For­mer T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (TTCAA) di­rec­tor gen­er­al Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al yes­ter­day said while it was not un­usu­al for a civil­ian air­craft to trans­port mu­ni­tions of war, they had to en­sure com­pli­ance with all ap­plic­a­ble laws.

“For a civil­ian air­craft, all so-called haz­ardous ma­te­ri­als must be pack­aged and car­ried in ac­cor­dance with those stan­dards,” he said.

Un­cer­tain if the air­craft and its crew were op­er­at­ing on be­half of the gov­ern­ment of Ukraine or as a pri­vate char­ter, he agreed both sce­nar­ios al­lowed for T&T law en­force­ment agen­cies to, “in­spect the car­go to en­sure that the pack­ag­ing and seg­re­ga­tion of all the haz­ardous ma­te­r­i­al is in ac­cor­dance with the stan­dards of in­ter­na­tion­al civ­il or­gan­i­sa­tions.”

He said lo­cal au­thor­i­ties had the right to ground the air­craft if the crew was not in com­pli­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al pro­to­cols.

In­di­cat­ing that there must be an air ser­vice agree­ment in place which would al­low the air­craft to come to T&T, Lutch­me­di­al said it had to be de­ter­mined if the air­line had ap­proval from the TTCAA to op­er­ate a com­mer­cial flight lo­cal­ly and if the air­craft had sat­is­fied all in­spec­tion checks in line with in­ter­na­tion­al safe­ty stan­dards.

“They have in the past ground­ed air­craft where there was non-com­pli­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al safe­ty stan­dards,” he claimed.

He added that the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion had the au­thor­i­ty to en­sure that all car­go was du­ly list­ed on the air­craft man­i­fest and was per­mis­si­ble to be in T&T ter­ri­to­ry.

In the case of non-com­pli­ance, he said ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion can be tak­en, such as seizure of the car­go, the air­craft and de­ten­tion of crew mem­bers.

Un­der the In­ter­na­tion­al Air Ser­vices Tran­sit Agree­ment (IAS­TA), an air­line of a coun­try which is the state par­ty to the agree­ment has the right to land in an­oth­er state par­ty ter­ri­to­ry for fu­el or main­te­nance. Ukraine and T&T are state par­ties to the IAS­TA.