AN­NA-LISA PAUL

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

In a shock­ing twist, this coun­try’s Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, the for­mer head of the sole in­tel­li­gence agency Roger Best, the Chief of De­fence Staff Dar­ryl Daniel and a lo­cal firearms deal­er were all yes­ter­day caught in a po­lice net as key per­sons of in­ter­est in the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), more specif­i­cal­ly in the ac­qui­si­tion of two sniper ri­fles.

There was high dra­ma yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, as a team of in­ves­ti­ga­tors, led by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Suzette Mar­tin, went to the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing at Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain, and in­to Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s of­fice to in­ter­ro­gate her.

Up to news time last night, Hare­wood-Christo­pher, ac­com­pa­nied by her team of at­tor­neys, was still be­ing ques­tioned for her al­leged role in the ac­qui­si­tion of AX2 bolt ac­tion sniper ri­fles by the SSA.

Sources with knowl­edge of the case told Guardian Me­dia that it was Best, when he was di­rec­tor of the SSA, who wrote to Hare­wood-Christo­pher and re­quest­ed the ri­fles.

How­ev­er, the pro­cure­ment was done through the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF), in the name of Daniel, and the firearms deal­er—who we have not named. The SSA is a civil­ian or­gan­i­sa­tion and Best was not au­tho­rised to buy the weapons.

Al­though Hare­wood-Christo­pher was not ar­rest­ed by the in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands she was as­sist­ing of­fi­cials specif­i­cal­ly in re­la­tion to the grant­i­ng of the two Firearm User’s Li­cences (FULs) for the sniper ri­fles.

Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed, how­ev­er, that key doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to the is­su­ing of these FULs have gone miss­ing from TTPS records.

It is al­so be­ing re­port­ed that two oth­er per­sons were de­tained in re­la­tion to the on­go­ing mat­ter.

“This mat­ter of sniper weapons be­ing grant­ed to a civil­ian or­gan­i­sa­tion is con­sid­ered se­ri­ous and could lead to the re­moval of the CoP,” a source close to the on­go­ing probe told Guardian Me­dia.

The hours-long in­ter­ro­ga­tion of Hare­wood-Christo­pher co­in­cid­ed with a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) meet­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, which fin­ished af­ter 8 last night.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher is a mem­ber of the NSC and in her stead, Guardian Me­dia con­firmed that Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Op­er­a­tions, Ju­nior Ben­jamin, was sum­moned to the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre around 4 pm.

Ben­jamin was re­port­ed­ly sum­moned to pro­vide an up­date on the progress of the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE) to the NSC.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher re­port­ed­ly con­tact­ed her team of at­tor­neys, which in­cludes Ken­neth Thomp­son, Ter­ry Boy­er and Robert Dood­nath, when the in­ves­ti­ga­tors ar­rived at her of­fice at 10 am to be­gin the in­ter­ro­ga­tion, in which she was said to be ful­ly co­op­er­a­tive with in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

Al­though Boy­er and Dood­nath re­fused to speak with re­porters when they emerged from the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing at 1 pm, the two re­turned to the site half an hour lat­er, where they re­port­ed­ly re­mained up to late last night.

Pressed by re­porters to pro­vide an up­date on the pro­ceed­ings af­ter their first vis­it, one of the at­tor­neys would on­ly con­firm, “We are deal­ing with a le­gal is­sue at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing.”

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials lat­er told Guardian Me­dia that Hare­wood-Christo­pher was “as­sist­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tors rel­a­tive to an out­stand­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

They added, “There isn’t much more in­for­ma­tion we can give right now.”

T&T Po­lice Ser­vice le­gal of­fi­cer, Sgt Za­heer Ali, was seen emerg­ing from the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing around 7 pm. He had ear­li­er de­clined to com­ment on the mat­ter and di­rect­ed all ques­tions to the Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment.

Calls to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard al­so went unan­swered last evening.

How­ev­er, sources in his of­fice said no for­mal ap­proach had been made to them up to late yes­ter­day on the mat­ter.

Mean­while, at­tor­ney Dar­ren Mitchell, who rep­re­sents for­mer SSA di­rec­tor Ma­jor Roger Best, was al­so seen en­ter­ing the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing yes­ter­day.

Best was ar­rest­ed at his Ari­ma home on Wednes­day, in con­nec­tion with the im­por­ta­tion of the two lethal ac­cu­ra­cy in­ter­na­tion­al AX2 sniper ri­fles.

So far, the state has charged for­mer SSA em­ploy­ees Brown, Sgt Sher­win Wal­dron and Su­san Portell-Grif­fith with the “trans­fer­ring” of four “pro­hib­it­ed firearms” from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to the SSA.

While Best was pre­vi­ous­ly de­tained and ques­tioned, he was sub­se­quent­ly re­leased, as there was no ev­i­dence to charge him with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.

Best, who was sus­pend­ed from the agency on March 2, 2024 and sub­se­quent­ly fired on May 18, 2024, had pre­vi­ous­ly told Guardian Me­dia: “The men­tion of me lead­ing a coup or any form of desta­bal­i­sa­tion is not on­ly pre­pos­ter­ous but lu­di­crous.”

Best re­mained in po­lice cus­tody last night.

On Ju­ly 3 in Par­lia­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley read in­to Hansard, a state­ment on the con­clu­sion of an au­dit con­duct­ed on the SSA by An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer, the for­mer am­bas­sador of T&T in Wash­ing­ton, DC, who re­placed Best at the SSA.

The au­dit re­vealed that the agency un­der Best amassed mil­i­tary-grade weapons and am­mu­ni­tion and op­er­at­ed a high­ly trained and mil­i­tarised so-called “Tac­ti­cal Re­sponse Unit.” There were al­so dis­turb­ing prac­tices of nepo­tism and op­por­tunism, lead­ing to the con­cen­tra­tion of mem­bers of one church be­ing hired by the SSA, as well as in­stances of dis­hon­esty and deep de­cep­tion, while the SSA was in­creas­ing­ly in­ca­pable of se­cur­ing pub­lic trust.

“Such per­sons be­longed to a cult which was arm­ing it­self while preach­ing a doc­trine for trained mil­i­tary and para­mil­i­tary per­son­nel with a re­li­gious call­ing to be the most suit­able per­sons to re­place the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship. They were ex­ert­ing high lev­els of in­flu­ence on the af­fairs of the agency to the detri­ment of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty,” Dr Row­ley had said.

Ru­mours swirl across coun­try

As the news spread of the in­ter­ro­ga­tion of CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher yes­ter­day, so did sev­er­al ru­mours about Gov­ern­ment’s re­ac­tion. One re­port in­di­cat­ed that there was a spe­cial Cab­i­net meet­ing be­ing held. How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia was able to con­firm there was no “spe­cial” meet­ing, on­ly the reg­u­lar Cab­i­net meet­ing which ran a lit­tle lat­er than usu­al.

There were al­so ru­mours of an emer­gency meet­ing at Bal­isi­er House with all can­di­dates and cam­paign man­agers to dis­cuss a pro­posed April gen­er­al elec­tion. Sev­er­al PNM sources con­firmed there was a meet­ing with can­di­dates and cam­paign man­agers but ve­he­ment­ly de­nied it was any­thing to do with an ear­ly poll.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands there was, how­ev­er, a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, which end­ed at 8 pm. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert was seen leav­ing the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre at 6.10 pm but gave no com­ment to the me­dia. Mes­sages to PM Row­ley and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who has been iden­ti­fied as the PM’s suc­ces­sor, al­so went unan­swered.