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Sunday, July 20, 2025

De­bate rages over pics of chil­dren with guns

AG, Moonilal on offensive

by

20161014

The De­fence Force is now prob­ing the al­leged leak of pic­tures of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi's chil­dren us­ing high-pow­ered weapons and a war of words yes­ter­day en­sued be­tween Al-Rawi and Op­po­si­tion MP Roodal Mooni­lal, who re­vealed the mat­ter in Par­lia­ment on Tues­day.

Con­fir­ma­tion of the De­fence Force probe came a day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley wad­ed in­to the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices on the is­sue of the pic­tures, say­ing there had been "a se­ri­ous breach of se­cu­ri­ty by the De­fence Force" and "ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on the part of the sol­dier" who took the pic­tures of the chil­dren.

Mooni­lal and Al-Rawi, in sep­a­rate in­ter­views with re­porters yes­ter­day, both went on the of­fen­sive fol­low­ing Mooni­lal's rev­e­la­tion of pho­tos of Al-Rawi's chil­dren train­ing with the high-pow­ered weapons at the army's Camp Cu­mu­to.

Mooni­lal, in Tues­day's bud­get de­bate, had dis­played pic­tures of the chil­dren pos­ing with UMP 9mm guns which the army us­es. Mooni­lal said the young­sters bore a strik­ing re­sem­blance to a se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial.

Al-Rawi sub­se­quent­ly said his fam­i­ly had been in­vit­ed by the army for a "threat as­sess­ment" af­ter he re­ceived death threats soon af­ter en­ter­ing of­fice last year. On Wednes­day, Row­ley in­ter­vened, slam­ming the De­fence Force at length, and Mooni­lal.

The De­fence Force lat­er con­firmed it had in­vit­ed Al-Rawi and his fam­i­ly to Camp Cu­mu­to for train­ing but didn't de­tail the type of train­ing.

Yes­ter­day, when re­porters asked Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon if Gov­ern­ment was sure the pho­tos came from the army, Dil­lon said: "In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to that sit­u­a­tion are on­go­ing, I can­not re­veal any­thing at this point. The De­fence Force is do­ing their in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions and I am sure I will be brought up to date with the re­port on this."

Dil­lon couldn't con­firm if Spe­cial Branch was in­volved in the probe.

On Mooni­lal's claim the pho­tos hadn't come from the army, Dil­lon said: "We're look­ing at all av­enues... in­ves­ti­ga­tions will be tak­ing place in all ar­eas... I can't give a time­line for com­ple­tion."

The T&T Guardian re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that the probe be­gan al­most im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Mooni­lal's state­ment in Par­lia­ment Tues­day. It is be­ing done by the De­fence Force's In­ter­nal Af­fairs Unit. All par­ties in­volved in the mat­ter would be in­ter­viewed, a source said.

But Mooni­lal sub­se­quent­ly told re­porters: "The Prime Min­is­ter ought not to have im­pugned the De­fence Force's in­tegri­ty (Wednes­day) with­out ev­i­dence."

Say­ing he had writ­ten the PM re­quest­ing an in­de­pen­dent probe and copied the let­ter to the po­lice, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and Chief of De­fence Staff, Mooni­lal added:

"It's now a mat­ter strict­ly for the po­lice and DPP if the PM doesn't do an in­de­pen­dent probe - which he's un­like­ly to un­der­take - but there's a pri­ma fa­cie breach of the law.

"It's il­le­gal to place a firearm in the hands of a mi­nor. That's why the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al hasn't con­firmed it's his chil­dren. He won't do that as there could be con­se­quences.

"He could face pros­e­cu­tion for con­spir­a­cy to com­mit a crim­i­nal of­fence. It was ac­tu­al­ly the Prime Min­is­ter who iden­ti­fied it was the AG's chil­dren."

He added: "How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter came to Par­lia­ment with­out a shred of ev­i­dence and at­tacked the army for leak­ing in­for­ma­tion... no such thing hap­pened. It's shock­ing the PM turned a blind eye to the breach of the law and was on­ly study­ing the army.

"I can't say who took the pic­ture, whether a rel­a­tive or a sol­dier or Al-Rawi him­self, but no De­fence Force mem­ber has giv­en me any in­for­ma­tion, im­ages or pic­tures that I used in Par­lia­ment. I con­demn the Prime Min­is­ter for his cat­e­gor­i­cal and con­temp­tu­ous dis­missal of the De­fence Force and un­der­min­ing its in­tegri­ty and cred­i­bil­i­ty in this."

Rel­a­tive post­ed pics

Mooni­lal not­ed the army's state­ment didn't con­firm the pho­tos were tak­en dur­ing a train­ing ses­sion.

"...They can­not do that as it's il­le­gal and an of­fence to place a firearm in the hands of a mi­nor. The law ap­plies even at Camp Cu­mu­to," he added.

Mooni­lal said he was in­formed the pic­tures were post­ed on a Face­book page "some­time around Oc­to­ber 2015" by a mem­ber of the Al-Rawi fam­i­ly.

"It went up for one day, in which some­one and sev­er­al per­sons saw it and it was re­moved swift­ly in one day," he said.

"But the weapons in the pic­tures car­ried rounds (of am­mu­ni­tion) so it was very dan­ger­ous. Any­one who places guns in the hands of kids breach­es the law," he not­ed.

Mooni­lal said the pic­tures came to his at­ten­tion in Feb­ru­ary-March (2016) and it took months to ver­i­fy whether the pic­ture was in T&T and whether they were T&T na­tion­als.

Mooni­lal said he was in­formed by "some­one," that Al-Rawi had al­so been at the army base. He called for Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to say al­so what "he was do­ing there."

Mooni­lal al­so said he did not breach par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege in show­ing the pic­tures since the House Speak­er didn't stop him.

I sleep well at­night–Al-Rawi

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi slammed Mooni­lal, but de­clined queries about the threat as­sess­ment con­cern­ing his fam­i­ly, when and how the sit­u­a­tion oc­curred and oth­er de­tails.

He said he had not­ed the De­fence Force's state­ment on the is­sue of the pic­tures of the young­sters with the weapons and didn't pro­pose to dis­cuss se­cu­ri­ty sur­round­ing his fam­i­ly for "ob­vi­ous rea­sons."

He said Mooni­lal was "chas­ing a sto­ry but at the same time he has sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems de­fend­ing a cer­tain sit­u­a­tion he's well aware of. I can't go in­to de­tails."

He added: "I'm con­fi­dent I have noth­ing to wor­ry about. My PM is equal­ly con­fi­dent. Dr Mooni­lal can ride this boat as long as he wants, he's not go­ing to prof­it from it. I sleep well at night."


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