Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter and ret’d Brig Gen­er­al John Sandy says he was alarmed to hear re­cent re­ports al­leg­ing that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25,573 rounds of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion were miss­ing but hopes the mat­ter can be set­tled and made pub­lic to ease the na­tion’s con­cerns.

Sandy served as the De­fence Force’s Chief of De­fence Staff (CDS) from 2000 to 2002 and was ap­point­ed as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter in 2010 by the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship coali­tion gov­ern­ment be­fore he was ap­point­ed as the per­ma­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tive for T&T to the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) Of­fice, Gene­va, Switzer­land, in 2012.

Ac­cord­ing to me­dia re­ports last week, the miss­ing am­mu­ni­tion was re­vealed dur­ing an au­dit at the Cu­mu­to Bar­racks ear­li­er in Feb­ru­ary.

The spent shells of 5.56 and 7.62 am­mu­ni­tion bear­ing Reg­i­ment and De­fence Force mark­ings have been found at the scene of sev­er­al mur­ders and shoot­ings in re­cent years.

An in­ves­tiga­tive team con­sist­ing of ret’d Col Lyle Alexan­der, ret’d ACP Welling­ton Vir­gil, ret’d ACP Mar­tin Mur­rain, ret’d Col Michael Clarke, and ret’d war­rant of­fi­cer Wayne Ngui.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Sandy, who now lives abroad, said he knew the for­mer sol­diers well and was con­fi­dent in their abil­i­ty to thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter, which he said was of great con­cern to the coun­try, and said he was hope­ful their find­ings could be made pub­lic.

“I cer­tain­ly hope it’s made pub­lic. In fact, that’s a ne­ces­si­ty.

“Peo­ple may be un­der the im­pres­sion that all this am­mu­ni­tion, what­ev­er the fi­nal fig­ure is, is out­side there some­where and some­one you don’t want us­ing it has the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of us­ing it.

“So I await with bat­ed breath to see what comes from it.”

Sandy added that dur­ing a re­cent vis­it to T&T, he was told by some­one that the am­mu­ni­tion may not be ac­tu­al­ly miss­ing, but the dis­crep­an­cies in the fi­nal fig­ure may be due to a ‘cler­i­cal er­ror,’ stress­ing that he could not ver­i­fy if this was the case, he hoped it was sim­ply a mis­un­der­stand­ing, as the con­se­quences of lost am­mu­ni­tion would be too dire for the coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty.

He added that he was al­so con­fused as to how such a ma­jor loss of equip­ment could have hap­pened, as he un­der­stood there were metic­u­lous checks on the Reg­i­ment’s stock.

“When I heard of it, I won­dered how that could have hap­pened be­cause there are so many checks and bal­ances on a dai­ly, week­ly and month­ly ba­sis to en­sure some­thing like this doesn’t hap­pen.

“This is some­thing I would hate to learn ac­tu­al­ly oc­curred, so I’m hop­ing it is re­al­ly a mis­un­der­stand­ing; there are too many hor­ri­ble pos­si­bil­i­ties of this am­mu­ni­tion end­ing up in the hands of peo­ple we don’t want it to.”

Dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and an­ti-crime strate­gies in March 2023, CDS Air Vice Mar­shall Dar­ryl Daniel re­spond­ed to ques­tions on the dis­cov­ery of spent Reg­i­ment and De­fence Force shells at crime scenes, de­scrib­ing the trend as “con­cern­ing,” adding that while the De­fence Force con­tin­ued to work with the po­lice in in­ves­ti­gat­ing the trend, no sol­diers were brought be­fore a court mar­tial be­tween 2022 up to the time of the com­mit­tee.

He al­so lament­ed that de­spite there be­ing “strin­gent” mea­sures in place to reg­u­late the use of arms and am­mu­ni­tion, un­re­li­a­bil­i­ty on the part of some sol­diers may be con­tribut­ing to the prob­lem.

“The chal­lenge is the hu­man fac­tor is part of it. You have peo­ple who un­der­stand their role and func­tions or should un­der­stand their role and func­tion, and some­times they may not live up to what is ex­pect­ed; hence, you would have to take the nec­es­sary ac­tion from a mil­i­tary per­spec­tive and a law per­spec­tive to ad­dress those is­sues.

“You would ap­pre­ci­ate that ev­i­dence has to be col­lect­ed and con­nect­ed back to an in­di­vid­ual for you to pros­e­cute them, and that is some­thing which is not eas­i­ly done.

“There is a trust fac­tor when it comes to mem­bers of the de­fence force be­cause we deal with arms and am­mu­ni­tion. We’re out there ... go­ing out on pa­trol, you’re giv­en a weapon and am­mu­ni­tion to go and do your du­ty, and hope­ful­ly, you won’t have to use it,” Daniel said at the time.

When asked if he had any ad­vice for the cur­rent lead­er­ship of the Reg­i­ment on how to en­sure trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, Sandy said while he could of­fer some sug­ges­tions, he pre­ferred to do so in per­son.

Guardian Me­dia tried to con­tact ret’d Col Lyle Alexan­der for com­ment on whether there was a dead­line for the team to com­plete the probe but was un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.