Jensen La Vende

With­in 24 hours af­ter re­ceiv­ing in­for­ma­tion that the life of the Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was pos­si­bly un­der threat, the Spe­cial Branch Unit was able to process the in­for­ma­tion and de­ter­mine it to be fake.While such swift work is usu­al­ly com­mend­ed, the of­fi­cers from the unit are now be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed as one of them leaked the de­tails of their in­ves­ti­ga­tion, caus­ing wide­spread pan­ic af­ter it was shared on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing at an im­promp­tu me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams con­firmed that the cir­cu­lat­ed memo from with­in the Spe­cial Branch Unit, which is tasked with high pro­file du­ties, in­clud­ing the pro­tec­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter, was gen­uine.How­ev­er, he as­sured that af­ter prob­ing the al­le­ga­tions made in the doc­u­ment they were found to be false.

Williams said nei­ther he nor the Prime Min­is­ter were told of the al­leged plot with­in the 24 hours that the of­fi­cers were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the claims.The Spe­cial Branch cor­re­spon­dence claimed that mem­bers of the Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen were trans­port­ing guns through­out the coun­try and were plan­ning to at­tack the PM's pri­vate res­i­dence in Phillip­ine and Siparia and free 11 men who have been charged with the mur­der of Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal and those charged in the Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man mur­der tri­al.

Williams said the mem­o­ran­dum cir­cu­lat­ing via so­cial me­dia was gen­er­at­ed from the Spe­cial Branch and signed by an as­signed su­per­in­ten­dent and cir­cu­lat­ed on Tues­day around 6.15 pm to all field sec­tions in Spe­cial Branch.He said the ru­mour which gen­er­at­ed the memo was not sup­port­ed by facts when the of­fi­cers did their in­ves­ti­ga­tions and the Spe­cial Branch would not have com­mu­ni­cat­ed any­thing to ei­ther him or the PM un­til the in­for­ma­tion was ver­i­fied.

He added: "It is noth­ing unique, it is the day-to-day func­tion­ing of the Spe­cial Branch."What is unique in this par­tic­u­lar in­stance is that a com­mu­nique like that, which is lim­it­ed to the unit, would have reached out in­to the pub­lic do­main. That breach of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty would have been done by a mem­ber of the Spe­cial Branch.

"Up to the point in time there is no sup­port to the con­tent of that ru­mour. I can­not speak about the fu­ture. I can speak to the point in time. I want to give you the as­sur­ance that this is an in­ter­nal com­mu­niqu� which reached the Spe­cial Branch that can be called in lay­man's terms a ru­mour."

Sec­ond bo­gus plot

Williams said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion had been launched in­to the leak and Hack­ett had been giv­en an Au­gust 3 dead­line to re­port to him on the mat­ter.He said ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion would be tak­en against the of­fi­cer who breached the unit's con­fi­den­tial­i­ty but did not spec­i­fy what that would en­tail.

Asked about pos­si­ble pun­ish­ment for the of­fi­cer, Williams said be­fore the com­ple­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion it would not be "smart of him" to com­ment, adding that all of­fences and pun­ish­ment are in the law books. He al­so said it was too soon to speak about trans­fer­ing the of­fi­cer/s re­spon­si­ble for the leak.

In 2011, the PM told the na­tion, via a me­dia con­fer­ence, that her life was in dan­ger fol­low­ing a plot to desta­bilise the coun­try.At least 13 men, in­clud­ing two po­lice of­fi­cers, were de­tained and lat­er re­leased with­out charge in the mat­ter.

Po­lice said that the men had pic­tures of then at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan with an "X" on his face and had al­so seized the book, "The Art of War", from one of the men. At the time of their ar­rest, the PM had an­nounced a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency, which was then up­grad­ed to a full state of emer­gency which end­ed on De­cem­ber 5.