Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL) has de­nied claims made by Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal that 80 per cent of pas­sen­gers on a flight were sub­ject­ed to sec­ondary screen­ing at the Or­lan­do In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Mon­day.

Dr Mooni­lal made the claim at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ Mon­day Night Re­port, in­sin­u­at­ing that the screen­ing was the re­sult of an al­leged strained re­la­tion­ship be­tween the T&T Gov­ern­ment and US pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s regime, due to T&T’s ties to the Venezuela gov­ern­ment.

Mooni­lal al­leged that every eight out of ten pas­sen­gers on flight BW482 were “placed in spe­cial jack­ets they had to put on. They were ush­ered, cart­ed away to a se­cu­ri­ty room where they were sub­ject­ed to a much more ag­gres­sive pat down. Their lug­gage was searched again and some al­so had to un­der­take what is called swab­bing of elec­tron­ic de­vices for ex­plo­sive residue.”

How­ev­er, in a state­ment re­leased yes­ter­day, CAL re­ject­ed the claim, say­ing it was un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed.

“The air­line can con­firm, fol­low­ing thor­ough checks with its se­nior per­son­nel in Or­lan­do, that no such screen­ing ex­er­cise with re­spect to Caribbean Air­lines pas­sen­gers was con­duct­ed,” CAL said.

“Fur­ther­more, the air­line has re­ceived no no­ti­fi­ca­tion or ad­vi­so­ry from US au­thor­i­ties in­di­cat­ing that such an ex­er­cise was con­duct­ed or is be­ing con­tem­plat­ed.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so found that sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al flights were ar­riv­ing at the same air­port around the same time, rais­ing doubts about the tar­get of the so-called sec­ondary screen­ing.

While BW482 land­ed at 12 pm, NK3643 from Can­cun, Mex­i­co, land­ed at 12.12 pm, and AV28 from Bo­go­ta, Colom­bia, land­ed at 12.15 pm.

Al­so asked about the claim yes­ter­day, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne de­clined to com­ment on what he re­ferred to as Mooni­lal’s “un­found­ed spec­u­la­tions.” How­ev­er, he lat­er shared CAL’s post to his Face­book page with the cap­tion: “This de­bunks the most re­cent false­hoods be­ing spread by UNC of­fi­cials. There is an on­go­ing and vi­cious agen­da of fake news un­der­way, which is specif­i­cal­ly de­signed to max­imise neg­a­tiv­i­ty and ex­ploit the fears held by some peo­ple.”

Mean­while, speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell al­so firm­ly re­ject­ed the claim, call­ing it a lie.

“Noth­ing is fur­ther from the truth. Per­sons are al­ways sub­ject to screen­ing. Per­sons in Trinidad and To­ba­go are al­so sub­ject to screen­ing. So, I be­lieve it’s just fear­mon­ger­ing on the part of Mem­ber Mooni­lal and on the part of the UNC. It’s elec­tion sea­son, it’s sil­ly sea­son, and Mem­ber Mooni­lal is sim­ply be­ing sil­ly.”

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day morn­ing and asked for fur­ther de­tails about pas­sen­gers who al­leged­ly un­der­went the sec­ondary screen­ing, in­clud­ing con­tact num­bers for fur­ther ver­i­fi­ca­tion, Mooni­lal said, “Pas­sen­gers will not want to speak on in­ter­ac­tion with US au­thor­i­ties.”

Con­tact­ed af­ter CAL’s state­ment, how­ev­er, Mooni­lal said, “This is a TSA (Trans­porta­tion Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tion) mat­ter not a CAL mat­ter. I cast no as­pi­ra­tions on CAL, or it is not an in­dict­ment on CAL. CAL can­not be aware of the US TSA poli­cies and prac­tices. The role of CAL is to drop and pick up pas­sen­gers.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to both the US Em­bassy and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds for fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion but re­ceived no re­spons­es up to press time.