Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Even af­ter a Ukrain­ian air­craft car­ry­ing a large quan­ti­ty of ex­plo­sives was al­lowed to leave the coun­try af­ter be­ing briefly de­tained while in tran­sit, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is still prob­ing the cir­cum­stances that led to its ar­rival in this coun­try. 

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the TTPS con­firmed that the air­craft and its crew were al­lowed to de­part on Fri­day evening af­ter lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al ver­i­fi­ca­tions were com­plete and it was de­ter­mined that no laws were breached. 

How­ev­er, it stat­ed that there is a con­tin­u­ing probe in­to the in­ci­dent. 

“The TTPS con­firms that this in­ci­dent has trig­gered a sep­a­rate and ac­tive na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the lo­cal chain of events that al­lowed an air­craft trans­port­ing volatile car­go to land in T&T with­out the re­quired pri­or au­tho­ri­sa­tion, there­by prompt­ing the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty re­sponse un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency,” it said. 

The re­lease in­clud­ed quotes from Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro on the in­ci­dent and cor­re­spond­ing probe, which fea­tured of­fi­cials and of­fi­cers from sev­er­al spe­cialised po­lice units, the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF), Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (AATT) and the Unit­ed States Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion. 

“This in­ci­dent has again demon­strat­ed the pos­i­tive re­sults that can oc­cur when we have that ex­tra­or­di­nary lev­el of in­ter­a­gency co­op­er­a­tion which is re­quired in mat­ters in­volv­ing in­ter­na­tion­al tran­sit, sen­si­tive car­go, and cross-bor­der co­or­di­na­tion,” Gue­var­ro said.

Gue­var­ro as­sured the pub­lic that the coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies re­main “ful­ly en­gaged, vig­i­lant and aligned” in safe­guard­ing T&T. 

The air­craft was de­tained af­ter land­ing at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Fri­day morn­ing. It came from the Ba­hamas and was en route to Cape Verde be­fore con­tin­u­ing on to Libya. 

Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly dis­cov­ered the air­craft was trans­port­ing ex­plo­sives that had not been de­clared in keep­ing with es­tab­lished in­ter­na­tion­al avi­a­tion and se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols.