Derek Achong

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan says the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil will not and can­not act on the Po­lice Com­pli­ants Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) re­port on the New Fly­ing Squad In­ves­tiga­tive Unit un­til it re­ceives an of­fi­cial copy from that body.He made the state­ment to re­porters af­ter de­liv­er­ing the open­ing ad­dress at a Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice of Drugs and Crime (UN­ODC) work­shop on ju­di­cial and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty at the Court­yard Mar­riott, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

He said: "The Gov­ern­ment can­not act on a re­port that it does not have. We have not had a copy of the re­port so we do not know who is im­pli­cat­ed, why they were im­pli­cat­ed and what was the mo­ti­va­tion."Ram­lo­gan warned that if the Gov­ern­ment was to re­ly on news­pa­per ar­ti­cles on the re­port, which might con­tain in­ac­cu­ra­cies, there would be se­ri­ous reper­cus­sions.

He al­so ques­tioned state­ments made by the PCA's di­rec­tor Gillian Lucky and PNM Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi at a meet­ing of a par­lia­men­tary Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Tues­day, where they both de­nied that the doc­u­ment was con­fi­den­tial.Al-Rawi ref­ered to the re­port while speak­ing in the Sen­ate two weeks ago and claimed the doc­u­ments had been leaked to him.While speak­ing to the com­mit­tee Lucky ac­cept­ed that the re­port was leaked but de­nied it was done by any­one in the PCA.

"It is a para­dox that you can have a doc­u­ment that con­tains high­ly sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion but yet still it is not con­fi­den­tial," Ram­lo­gan said.He sug­gest­ed that Al-Rawi should have re­cused him­self from the par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee as he had an ap­par­ent con­flict of in­ter­est. The is­sue was in fact raised dur­ing the meet­ing. How­ev­er, it was over­ruled and Al-Rawi was al­lowed to stay on and con­tribute."It is clear what he was go­ing to do by sit­ting there is act­ing in a self-serv­ing man­ner to fur­ther pro­mote his own in­ter­ests," Ram­lo­gan said.

He al­so took is­sue with Lucky's state­ment be­fore the com­mit­tee where she said that al­though the re­port was leaked, such an oc­cur­rence was not a threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.He said she was not au­tho­rised to make such an as­sess­ment as that fell with­in the purview of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

"What you have here is an al­le­ga­tion that for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Jack Warn­er was ac­cused of set­ting up a para­mil­i­tary or­gan­i­sa­tion, known as the Fly­ing Squad, with­in the bo­som of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and that was go­ing to op­er­ate par­al­lel to the Po­lice Ser­vice out­side of the le­gal frame­work. If that does not have im­pli­ca­tions for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty I don't know what will," Ram­lo­gan said.

He ac­cused both Lucky and Al-Rawi of la­belling the re­port non-con­fi­den­tial to at­tempt to de­flect at­ten­tion on the is­sue of its il­le­gal dis­sem­i­na­tion to the me­dia.He claimed that Al-Rawi had changed his ver­sion of how the re­port reached him sev­er­al times since he first raised it in Par­lia­ment.He again de­fend­ed the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) while stat­ing re­peat­ed­ly he was cer­tain the leak did not em­anate from there.

"I have said as a mat­ter of pub­lic record I did not think the leak oc­curred from the of­fice of the DPP be­cause the DPP has dealt with far more po­lit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive and oth­er kinds of sen­si­tive re­ports on mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and there has nev­er been any leak from that of­fice," Ram­lo­gan said.Refer­ing to a let­ter he sent to act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams call­ing for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the leak of the re­port, Ram­lo­gan said he felt that a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty clause in the PCA's leg­is­la­tion had been breached.

"Un­der the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty Act any ev­i­dence or in­for­ma­tion the PCA ob­tains, the law deems it to be con­fi­den­tial."It fur­ther has a cor­re­spond­ing pro­vi­sion that if there is a breach of such con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion then it is a crim­i­nal of­fence, the pun­ish­ment for which is a five-year jail term and a fine. So it is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter," Ram­lo­gan said.