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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Sign of growing criminal disrespect for law, says Rowley

by

20140504

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley says he is not en­tire­ly sur­prised by the killing of state pros­e­cu­tor Dana See­ta­hal, SC, as the brazen­ness of crim­i­nals has been grow­ing from strength to strength.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day Row­ley said he was dis­tressed by the pain See­ta­hal's fam­i­ly was forced to face.

"There are two as­pects to this. There is a loss of life of Dana See­ta­hal, who has been snuffed out by crim­i­nals, and every ef­fort should be made to en­sure that who ever had done this is brought to jus­tice.

"But there is some­thing more sin­is­ter and fright­en­ing about it, and that is the loss of life of Dana See­ta­hal, a state pros­e­cu­tor in an on­go­ing se­ri­ous crim­i­nal mat­ter. And if her demise and the at­tack up­on her has any­thing to do with her as a state pros­e­cu­tor, then this would rep­re­sent a very se­ri­ous and dis­turb­ing and an es­ca­la­tion in the dis­re­spect that the crim­i­nal com­mu­ni­ty has for the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty," Row­ley said.

Say­ing this could al­so sig­nal a to­tal break­down in law and or­der, Row­ley said once the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem be­gins to op­er­ate out of fear of any kind then the coun­try and its cit­i­zens were "in big trou­ble."

"And on­ly the brutes will sur­vive in this jun­gle. I and hop­ing the po­lice will do every­thing pos­si­ble to bring to jus­tice in the quick­est time those who con­spired to car­ry out this out­rage," Row­ley urged.

The PNM's pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer, at­tor­ney Faris Al-Rawi, said See­ta­hal's killing was a heinous act of cow­ardice.

"It was no doubt in­tend­ed to de­liv­er a sup­posed 'fi­nal so­lu­tion' to a woman pa­tri­ot­ic to the core, known to live with­out fear and ever-de­fi­ant in the face of any at­tempt to in­tim­i­date," Al-Rawi said.

He said re­ports that 5.62 am­mu­ni­tion was found at the scene were ev­i­dence of the use of mil­i­tary-type as­sault ri­fles.

"This was no or­di­nary event. Clear­ly, whether in­tend­ed or not, a mes­sage was sent from the un­der­world to every cit­i­zen of this coun­try, and to the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty who will re­ceive this news, that T&T is out of con­trol and that no one is im­mune from tar­get­ed dark­ness," Al-Rawi said.

He added that all who knew See­ta­hal could bear wit­ness to her pas­sion and com­mit­ment to every­thing she be­lieved in, be it law, men­tor­ship, teach­ing, na­tion­al com­men­tary or plain old chat over cof­fee at her cham­bers.

"We in the PNM be­lieve that her life's work and ded­i­ca­tion re­quires that we as a na­tion stand strong in the face of this at­tack on every­thing that is de­cent and that we work to­geth­er in re­fus­ing to suc­cumb to the at­tacks of the in­sid­i­ous.

"We have de­mand­ed a re­turn to in­tel­li­gence led crime de­tec­tion and so­lu­tion. The Gov­ern­ment has fi­nal­ly re­turned to the struc­ture and re­sources of SAUTT by a dif­fer­ent name. We have de­mand­ed spe­cif­ic re­forms to the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in our ten-point plan to the Gov­ern­ment," Al-Rawi said.

He said in a de­bate in the Sen­ate on April 8, the PNM de­mand­ed im­prove­ments for state at­tor­neys.

See­ta­hal's life's work, Al-Rawi added, called for the na­tion to fight back and re­main de­fi­ant in the face of evil.


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