Gail Alexan­der

Se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies are mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion fol­low­ing re­ceipt last Sun­day of death threats on the life of Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon said yes­ter­day.

The anony­mous death threat was re­ceived at the Po­lice Com­mand Cen­tre be­fore noon last Sun­day, at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11 am, it was con­firmed by po­lice sources. The caller - re­port­ed­ly male - claimed to be from the "army," they added. The per­son threat­ened the life of the Pres­i­dent and "all ah dem." They al­so stat­ed they were "wait­ing by the Sa­van­nah to of­fload shots for the Pres­i­dent."

The caller fur­ther threat­ened to "bomb" po­lice sta­tions.

In con­firm­ing the threat yes­ter­day, Dil­lon said there was as yet no "cred­i­ble ev­i­dence" on the mat­ter, but said se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies were con­tin­u­ing to mon­i­tor it as per pro­ce­dure.

"And we con­tin­ue to en­sure the se­cu­ri­ty of the head of state. The De­fence Force and Spe­cial Branch have been in­formed ac­cord­ing­ly - through the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and Chief of De­fence Staff - and are tak­ing the nec­es­sary ac­tion," Dil­lon added.

Po­lice, who have pro­ce­dures to re­spond to all man­ner of threats, "moved ap­pro­pri­ate­ly" when the threat was re­ceived on Sun­day, sources said.

Fol­low­ing that de­vel­op­ment, a se­nior Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cial met with the Pres­i­dent for a half-hour meet­ing at his of­fice just be­fore noon yes­ter­day, of­fi­cials con­firmed.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent con­firmed that in­for­ma­tion had been re­ceived from the po­lice about a threat be­ing made on the Pres­i­dent's life very re­cent­ly. The of­fice al­so con­firmed Car­mona met with a "high rank­ing po­lice of­fi­cer" yes­ter­day morn­ing, but they could shed no light on that.

Since Car­mona be­gan serv­ing as Pres­i­dent in 2013, there has nev­er been a threat of this na­ture - con­cern­ing a spe­cif­ic tele­phoned alert to po­lice - on his life. How­ev­er, when Car­mona was a High Court judge there had been a death threat against him around 2011, when he had been deal­ing with a high pro­file case con­cern­ing a known Cen­tral gang leader. That per­son was killed last year. Car­mona had been giv­en se­cu­ri­ty when the threat was re­ceived.

Pres­i­dent's House op­er­a­tions dur­ing Car­mona's tenure - which ends next year - have re­cent­ly been the fo­cus of scruti­ny re­gard­ing ex­pen­di­ture is­sues.

Last year May, se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies were al­so on high alert fol­low­ing so­cial me­dia "Isis" bomb scare threats re­gard­ing malls. A man was sub­se­quent­ly jailed for 21 days for one "hoax" call.

Un­der the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act (sec­tion 21), it is an of­fence to know­ing­ly com­mu­ni­cate false in­for­ma­tion of an ex­plo­sive or tox­ic de­vice, or a weapon of mass de­struc­tion. This car­ries a max­i­mum penal­ty of up to 15 years im­pris­on­ment, Gov­ern­ment has said.