Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) deputy leader Roodal Mooni­lal has called for the “re­al rea­son” why charges were re­cent­ly dropped against three Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) em­ploy­ees, af­ter not­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had placed “so much so-called ev­i­dence in the pub­lic space un­der par­lia­men­tary cov­er.”

In a rul­ing on Tues­day, Mas­ter Kim­i­tra Gray dropped the charges against con­fessed spy Pas­tor Ian Brown, for­mer se­cu­ri­ty ad­vi­sor Suzanne Por­tel-Grif­fith and po­lice­man Sher­win Wal­dron, who were charged last May for mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice in con­nec­tion with the al­leged trans­fer of four pro­hib­it­ed firearms be­long­ing to the TTPS to the SSA.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal la­belled the case “a hoax” and claimed that the drop­ping of charges against the three SSA of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing a po­lice­man, “con­firms that the in­ten­tion of the Row­ley-led at­tack on the SSA was po­lit­i­cal and de­signed to re­move the lead­er­ship of the SSA.”

Mooni­lal al­leged that the charges were laid af­ter a team of pro­fes­sion­als stuck to their du­ties and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties “and de­clined to do the PNM’s dirty work.”

He opined, “The pros­e­cu­tion was un­able to prove the charges and did not com­ply with the di­rec­tives of the court, re­sult­ing in the charges be­ing dis­missed ... This scan­dalous mat­ter is an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the PNM Gov­ern­ment’s bla­tant abuse of pow­er and ma­nip­u­la­tion of the process for its po­lit­i­cal ben­e­fit ...”

Mooni­lal ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley of “abus­ing” par­lia­men­tary im­mu­ni­ty to de­liv­er what he claimed was an “un­jus­ti­fied and in­flam­ma­to­ry ad­dress al­leg­ing that cer­tain SSA of­fi­cers were in­volved in a coup plot against his ad­min­is­tra­tion. Not one sin­gle per­son has been ar­rest­ed or charged for any of­fence re­lat­ing to any at­tempt to over­throw the Gov­ern­ment,” he said.

He fur­ther the­o­rised, “The in­abil­i­ty to sus­tain charges against the of­fi­cers val­i­dates the po­si­tion that Row­ley was en­gaged in a flight of fan­cy, with an imag­i­na­tive con­coc­tion of a threat to his Gov­ern­ment. This hoax was akin to the Email­gate scan­dal of Row­ley a decade ago.”