Richard?Lord

Chief of De­fence Staff Brigadier Rod­ney Smart said yes­ter­day's at­tempt by two dis­charged Spe­cial Forces sol­diers to al­leged­ly burn a house in Princes Town was part of yet an­oth­er at­tempt by the crim­i­nal el­e­ment to desta­bilise the coun­try.

The two–Cpl Steve Dou­glas and Lance Cpl De­von Ed­wards–were ar­rest­ed by po­lice hours lat­er at Munroe Road, Char­lieville, Ch­agua­nas.

Smart was speak­ing dur­ing a spe­cial news con­fer­ence host­ed with act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Harold Phillip at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair. He said it was called to clar­i­fy in­for­ma­tion on the in­ci­dent, adding that the week­ly meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil was al­so held yes­ter­day.

Smart said the in­ci­dent was "an at­tempt by those crim­i­nal el­e­ments who would want to place our so­ci­ety in a desta­bil­is­ing con­di­tion." He said the De­fence Force would as­sist the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice with its in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Smart said Dou­glas and Ed­wards "were dis­charged be­cause they were not dis­play­ing the be­hav­iour we felt that ju­nior lead­ers should dis­play." He said they were sol­diers for 18 and 14 years re­spec­tive­ly and were both dis­charged in 2014.

"We felt that giv­en the lev­el of lead­er­ship that we had en­trust­ed in them, they were not demon­strat­ing the (re­quired) qual­i­ties. As a con­se­quence they were dis­charged," Smart said. He ex­pressed "se­vere dis­ap­point­ment" about yes­ter­day's in­ci­dent, not­ing they were "once trust­ed" and ex­press­ing con­cern that the two "could al­low them­selves to be used in such a way by the crim­i­nal el­e­ment."

In re­sponse to ques­tions, he said Dou­glas "com­mit­ted cer­tain dis­ci­pli­nary mis­de­meanors that should not be com­mit­ted at the lev­el he was at," while Ed­wards "had been in­volved in an al­ter­ca­tion with an­oth­er mem­ber of the De­fence Force (and) he was dis­charged."

Smart said the De­fence Force "con­tin­u­ous­ly looks at its peo­ple in terms of their pro­fes­sion­al­ism. If at any time we as­cer­tain there are peo­ple who should not be in our ranks we dis­charge them, so it is a con­tin­u­ous process."

He said based on the train­ing process for sol­diers "we al­ways hope that the civil­ians we bring will in­cul­cate the be­hav­iour of the De­fence Force, (but) un­for­tu­nate­ly some will pre­fer to go the oth­er side." He said con­se­quent­ly, "we are very swift in get­ting rid of those per­sons."

Smart said af­ter of­fi­cers have been dis­charged "we try to as­sist them in terms of their em­ploy­ment af­ter­wards to se­cure gain­ful em­ploy­ment." He said nei­ther of the dis­charged of­fi­cers were bomb ex­perts but "as a mem­ber of the Spe­cial Forces one would have re­ceived train­ing in ex­plo­sive de­vices."

This is not the first time that sol­diers at­tached to the Spe­cial Forces Unit of the army have been ac­cused on in­volve­ment in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

For­mer sol­diers Ri­car­do de Four and Leon Nurse were al­so among a group of men who were con­vict­ed in the Unit­ed States for the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of US war vet­er­an Bal­ram "Ba­lo" Ma­haraj, 62, while he was va­ca­tion­ing here in Trinidad in 2005. Nurse was a mem­ber of the army's Spe­cial Forces Unit and reached the lev­el of sergeant.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, around 6.40 am yes­ter­day of­fi­cers from the High­way Pa­trol Unit in­ter­cept­ed a sil­ver Qashqai Nis­san SUV with the men along the north-bound lane of the Uri­ah But­ler High­way near the Munroe Road Fly­over, Ch­agua­nas.

Dur­ing a search of the ve­hi­cle, po­lice dis­cov­ered an undis­closed quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion, four guns, in­clud­ing a Mack 10 sub­ma­chine gun with an ex­tend­ed mag­a­zine and a quan­ti­ty of cash.

The men were al­so linked to an ear­li­er in­ci­dent in south Trinidad, in which a fam­i­ly's home was fire­bombed and shot up.