Denyse Renne

The se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer named by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley re­fused to com­ment yes­ter­day on the al­le­ga­tion he had rec­om­mend­ed Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine as in­ter­im head of the Strate­gic In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA).Ram­nar­ine, 33, was ap­point­ed head of the SIA in ear­ly Jan­u­ary 2011. She re­signed nine days lat­er af­ter it was dis­cov­ered she was un­qual­i­fied for the post.

The claims against the of­fi­cer were made as Row­ley ad­dressed a PNM pub­lic meet­ing in St Au­gus­tine on Tues­day night. Row­ley pro­duced let­ters he said were writ­ten by the of­fi­cer, then a su­per­in­ten­dent, in Oc­to­ber 2010 and ad­dressed to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.Among the con­cerns raised in the of­fi­cer's let­ters was the SIA was car­ry­ing out il­le­gal wire-tap­ping.

The let­ter al­so rec­om­mend­ed im­me­di­ate ac­tion be­cause in­for­ma­tion gath­ered in that way was be­ing leaked to the Op­po­si­tion PNM, adding if such ac­tion con­tin­ued, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment would be un­der­mined and would fall.Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, the of­fi­cer an­swered his phone and iden­ti­fied him­self. Af­ter be­ing told the T&T Guardian was on the line, he hung up.

Two more calls had the same re­sult. The of­fi­cer did not re­turn a voice mes­sage left on his phone. The of­fi­cer, who is cur­rent­ly on va­ca­tion leave, is now at­tached to a ma­jor in­tel­li­gence unit. The SIA has since been dis­band­ed and was re­placed by the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), which is un­der­go­ing struc­tur­al change and will soon form part of the Na­tion­al In­tel­li­gence Agency (NIA).

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on whether prop­er pro­to­col was fol­lowed when the of­fi­cer wrote di­rect­ly to the Prime Min­is­ter, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mervyn Richard­son re­fused to com­ment, say­ing he did not hear what was said at the St Au­gus­tine meet­ing."I can't say that he did that at all. I don't have that type of doc­u­men­ta­tion. Dur­ing the pe­ri­od, I was an As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP). I can­not com­ment on those things," Richard­son said.

Sev­er­al at­tor­neys, who wished not to be iden­ti­fied, yes­ter­day said the of­fi­cer did not fol­low pro­to­col, adding act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams ought to be wor­ried if his of­fice was al­so be­ing sim­i­lar­ly in­ter­fered with by politi­cians."If what has been made pub­lic is ac­cu­rate, then I be­lieve the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice should be con­cerned," one at­tor­ney said.

Say­ing there was a chain of com­mand which need­ed to be fol­lowed, an­oth­er at­tor­ney said such mat­ters ought to have first gone through the com­mis­sion­er, who would then in­form the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter.