Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Mon­day night de­fend­ed the em­pha­sis and pri­or­i­ty be­ing placed on the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the as­sas­si­na­tion of Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal."It is vi­tal, in terms of the in­sti­tu­tions of state," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, as she ad­dressed the me­dia af­ter an emer­gency meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) in San Fer­nan­do.Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who is chair­man of the NSC, said: "Every­one who is mur­dered is a pain and loss to every sin­gle one of us."

How­ev­er, she said See­ta­hal's mur­der was seen as a "di­rect at­tack" on some­one who had op­er­at­ed with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.See­ta­hal was as­sas­si­nat­ed on Sun­day morn­ing as she made her way to her Wook­brook home. She was am­bushed by at­tack­ers along Hamil­ton Hold­er Street, Wood­brook.Per­sad-Bisses­sar said See­ta­hal's mur­der went far be­yond the reach of T&T and "the func­tion­ing of our na­tion and the func­tion­ing of our peo­ple."

She said the Gov­ern­ment has of­fered act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams all the re­sources he and his team re­quired for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion."Should they re­quire the use of for­eign ex­per­tise in this in­ves­ti­ga­tion the Gov­ern­ment has of­fered to pro­vide the re­sources that may be nec­es­sary for such ex­per­tise to be utilised by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and his team," she added.

The Prime Min­is­ter said Williams had agreed to con­sid­er the as­pects of so­cial me­dia that could be utilised and have fur­ther dis­cus­sions with the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard on whether, apart from print and elec­tron­ic me­dia, in­ves­ti­ga­tors could go fur­ther in us­ing so­cial me­dia.Both the Prime Min­is­ter and Williams called for wit­ness­es to See­ta­hal's as­sas­si­na­tion to come for­ward and help.

Williams said the po­lice had been re­ceiv­ing in­for­ma­tion and "ex­ten­sive co-op­er­a­tion" from cit­i­zens, "which is a very pos­i­tive sign that the cit­i­zens are part­ner­ing with the Po­lice Ser­vice to­wards ad­dress­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion."Williams said the po­lice were on top of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and were us­ing all avail­able re­sources to speed it up.The Prime Min­is­ter said the com­mis­sion­er had briefed the NSC on the tech­no­log­i­cal as­pects and video ev­i­dence in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

"At the mo­ment, the in­tel­li­gence is be­ing analysed to pro­vide the ev­i­den­tial ba­sis to lead to an ar­rest or ar­rests and there­after to sus­tain a pros­e­cu­tion to lead to a con­vic­tion. So they have ad­vised us that they are work­ing on that as­pect, the sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy as­pect," she said.Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­missed state­ments com­par­ing T&T to Colom­bia af­ter See­ta­hal's mur­der.