Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter 

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Mur­der ac­cused Ra­jaee Ali has been de­nied ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion he re­quest­ed from the po­lice in re­la­tion to the mur­der of Dana See­ta­hal, who he and nine oth­ers are charged with mur­der­ing.

In a let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 7, Ali was in­formed that the re­quest he made could not be pro­vid­ed as that would jeop­ar­dise the court case, and that the pub­lic in­ter­est in dis­clos­ing the in­for­ma­tion was eclipsed by the im­par­tial pros­e­cut­ing of the mat­ter.

The let­ter stat­ed, “In ap­ply­ing the pub­lic in­ter­est con­sid­er­a­tion out­lined in sec­tion 35 of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, we find that there is greater pub­lic in­ter­est in en­sur­ing the im­par­tial ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the mat­ter, as op­posed to the po­ten­tial prej­u­dice of the pro­ceed­ings caused by the pre­cip­i­tous dis­clo­sure of vi­tal in­for­ma­tion. We there­fore find that the pub­lic in­ter­est in main­tain­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty read­i­ly out­weighs the pub­lic in­ter­est in the dis­clo­sure of the re­quest­ed doc­u­ments.”

Among oth­er things, Ali in his De­cem­ber 24 re­quest, asked sus­pend­ed po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to con­firm that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to See­ta­hal’s mur­der was free from in­flu­ence by po­lit­i­cal and oth­er pow­er­ful groups and sus­pect­ed per­pe­tra­tors.

On Ju­ly 25, 2015, Ali, his broth­ers, Ish­mael and Hamid Ali, De­vaughn Cum­mings, Ri­car­do Stew­art, Earl Richards, Stephan Cum­mings, Kevin Parkin­son, Le­ston Gon­za­les, Ro­get Bouch­er and Gareth Wise­man were charged with killing See­ta­hal.

Stephan Cum­mings is now a State wit­ness af­ter agree­ing to tes­ti­fy against his for­mer friends and his broth­er.

See­ta­hal was am­bushed and shot dead around 12.05 am on May 4, 2014, along Hamil­ton Hold­er Street, Wood­brook, while re­turn­ing to her One Wood­brook Place home af­ter leav­ing the Ma Pau casi­no along Ari­api­ta Av­enue. An au­top­sy re­vealed the for­mer in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor was shot five times by her as­sailants.

Ali ar­gued that See­ta­hal’s life was threat­ened, and the po­lice and its agents were aware of the threats and failed to use the re­sources avail­able to them, the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), to pre­vent her killing.

He called on the po­lice to ei­ther ac­cept or re­ject this the­o­ry and pro­vide de­tailed in­for­ma­tion on their po­si­tion.

Ali asked, “Do you ac­cept or re­ject the con­tention that the TTPS is re­spon­si­ble for Ms See­ta­hal’s death? Did the TTPS know of Ms See­ta­hal’s in­volve­ment in in­ter­na­tion­al drug in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­duct­ed by the DEA?”

Ali al­so re­quest­ed a list of the war­rants is­sued in his name from 2012 to 2015 per the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act Chap­ter 22:04. He al­so re­quest­ed his voice al­go­rithm, fin­ger­prints, all pho­tographs of him and any De­oxyri­bonu­cle­ic Acid (DNA) be­long­ing to him­self.

Some of the oth­er in­for­ma­tion he re­quest­ed in­clud­ed: 

1. Whether the TTPS, its or­gans and its agents re­ceived ad­vance warn­ings from SSA?

2. Copies of records, doc­u­ments, da­ta, mem­os, emails, cor­re­spon­dences, analy­sis, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, and threats (in­clud­ing the threat lev­el) re­ceived from the SSA that were used?

3. Was the DEA in­volved in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion? If yes, what in­for­ma­tion did they pro­vide?

4. Did any­one pro­vide any in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing the death of Dana See­ta­hal?

5. Did your min­istry re­ceive any in­for­ma­tion from any sit­ting/for­mer mem­ber of Par­lia­ment?