Rep­sol YPF

A mas­sive search is un­der­way by law en­force­ment of­fi­cials for peo­ple be­lieved to have high-pow­ered ri­fles which were to be used in the al­leged as­sas­si­na­tion at­tempt of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and three of her Cab­i­net col­leagues. In­ves­ti­ga­tors said they had been told the weapons formed part of cache which was re­port­ed­ly dis­cov­ered at the home of a Cen­tral busi­ness­man. The busi­ness­man, who has since gone in­to hid­ing, has been de­scribed as a ma­jor dis­trib­u­tor of weapons. He had promised to turn him­self in to po­lice but up to late yes­ter­day still re­mained on the run. In­ves­ti­ga­tors said they al­so were ex­plor­ing the an­gle that the busi­ness­man might be try­ing to flee the coun­try and as a re­sult po­lice of­fi­cers were work­ing close­ly with In­ter­pol.

Of­fi­cers al­so were work­ing on in­for­ma­tion that was not the first time the busi­ness­man might have sold so­phis­ti­cat­ed weapons to crim­i­nals. Po­lice said they al­so sus­pect the busi­ness­man al­so might have had close links to sev­er­al lo­cal Mus­lims. Dur­ing a raid of the busi­ness­man's home in Chase Vil­lage, Ch­agua­nas, on Wednes­day, of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered sev­er­al il­le­gal firearms, in­clud­ing a high-pow­ered as­sault ri­fle, a sub-ma­chine gun and two 9mm pis­tols. More than 200 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion, in­clud­ing 35 rounds of "ar­mour-pierc­ing" am­mu­ni­tion, al­so were re­port­ed­ly seized at the man's home and in a ve­hi­cle which was parked out­side. The busi­ness­man is said to op­er­ate a car parts and used car busi­ness in east Trinidad.

Up to late yes­ter­day, the weapons were be­ing kept by mem­bers of the Or­gan­ised Crime, Nar­cotics and Firearms Bu­reau (OC­NFB) and were ex­pect­ed to be sent to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, ei­ther to­day or ear­ly next week, to be in­spect­ed by bal­lis­tics of­fi­cers. In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the weapons al­ready were dust­ed by fin­ger­prints ex­perts and trac­ing was be­ing con­duct­ed. Po­lice said, how­ev­er, while they were mak­ing every ef­fort to lo­cate the sus­pects, the lift­ing of the cur­few posed an im­ped­i­ment as crim­i­nals were al­lowed free move­ment. A to­tal of 16 peo­ple have been served with de­ten­tion or­ders. Two are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore the Spe­cial Re­view Tri­bunal to­day.