Gail Alexan­der

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi says he isn't the sub­ject of any po­lice probe–con­cern­ing pic­tures of young­sters hold­ing high-pow­ered weapons–and he's not re­sign­ing.

The AG made that clear yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing re­newed Op­po­si­tion calls for his res­ig­na­tion af­ter it was con­firmed po­lice are now prob­ing the is­sue of the pic­tures of young­sters, al­leged to be Al-Rawi's chil­dren, hold­ing the weapons.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Roodal Mooni­lal, who re­vealed the pic­tures in Par­lia­ment on Tues­day, had writ­ten the act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, De­fence Force head and Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions call­ing for the probe.

In his de­fence, Al-Rawi had said his fam­i­ly was in­vit­ed by the De­fence Force for a "threat as­sess­ment" af­ter he re­ceived death threats last year.The De­fence Force al­so con­firmed it had in­vit­ed Al-Rawi and his fam­i­ly to Camp Cu­mu­to for train­ing. But Mooni­lal has coun­tered that it is il­le­gal for weapons to be in mi­nors' pos­ses­sion and "some­one" had to be ac­count­able.

How­ev­er, le­gal sources yes­ter­day point­ed the T&T Guardian to Sec­tion 5 of the Firearm Act on peo­ple deemed to be in pos­ses­sion of such weapons "in the ab­sence of any law­ful ex­cuse." They said the lat­ter clause was the end of the mat­ter con­cern­ing the pic­tures. They said the act's sec­tions would ex­plain why pic­tures of chil­dren hold­ing guns have ap­peared on the pages of lo­cal news­pa­pers.

Yes­ter­day, af­ter the po­lice con­firmed a probe was be­ing done on the pic­tures, Mooni­lal called on Al-Rawi to re­sign, or for the Prime Min­is­ter to re­move him in the same way the PM re­moved the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald as a min­is­ter in March when she be­came the sub­ject of po­lice and In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion probes on sev­er­al is­sues.

Mooni­lal added, "I'm sat­is­fied the Com­mis­sion­er has act­ed on my re­quest. In the cir­cum­stances, the Prime Min­is­ter has lit­tle choice but to re­move the AG pend­ing out­come of the probe, as he set this prece­dent with Mc­Don­ald. There's no fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence be­tween both min­is­ters.

"The AG has to re­sign since he's tit­u­lar head of the Bar and a law en­force­ment min­is­ter who deals with the po­lice, army and sim­i­lar agen­cies. Con­flict of in­ter­est will arise be­tween his po­si­tion and the De­fence Force and po­lice probes. There's an is­sue be­fore Cab­i­net for ex­ten­sion of the tenure of DF head Rod­ney Smart. With the DF probe in­to the pic­tures on­go­ing, the AG can­not sit in Cab­i­net on this."

How­ev­er, Al-Rawi, in Lon­don for meet­ings with the British DPP and Pub­lic De­fend­er on T&T is­sues, coun­tered, "I'm not the sub­ject of any po­lice probe/in­quiry. Nor could I pos­si­bly be the sub­ject of any such, as I have noth­ing to an­swer. I've noth­ing to wor­ry about, as this is a pur­pose­ful at­tempt by Mooni­lal, who's twist­ing facts, al­le­ga­tions and lies in­to one ma­trix."

Not­ing he hasn't con­firmed the young­sters in the pic­tures are his chil­dren, Al-Rawi said what the army did in re­la­tion to the chil­dren "...is some­thing for the army–I have no po­si­tion on that."

He said while the army was with his chil­dren at Camp Cu­mu­to, he and PNM MP Stu­art Young were in an­oth­er area.

"I haven't giv­en any po­si­tion on this main­ly be­cause it will ad­dress se­cu­ri­ty is­sues re­gard­ing my fam­i­ly, which I will not put in­to the pub­lic do­main, bait­ed–and ex­posed to risk–by some­one I con­sid­er to be a poor piece of hu­man­i­ty," Al-Rawi said.

"Peo­ple have sent me umpteen im­ages of T&T kids in cus­tody of po­lice and army hold­ing weapons. Dr Mooni­lal can't pro­duce any­thing to prove his claim the im­ages came from Face­book. I can­not be­lieve his claim a rel­a­tive of mine post­ed it."

On con­flict of in­ter­est with the De­fence Force and po­lice probes, Al-Rawi said, "How do any mat­ters (for Cab­i­net) re­late to any­thing that con­cerns the pic­tures and the De­fence Force. It shows his ig­no­rance of the law and com­mon sense. He doesn't sit in Cab­i­net. How could he know what is on the agen­da?"

Al-Rawi, who is al­so at­tend­ing a Paris meet­ing of the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force, re­turns next week.

In a re­lease on Thurs­day, the De­fence Force con­firmed they had host­ed Al-Rawi and his fam­i­ly at Camp Cu­mu­to af­ter death threats were is­sued to the AG. It al­so con­firmed a probe in­to how the pho­tos of the chil­dren were leaked.

In ex­plain­ing what tran­spired then, Se­nior Pub­lic Af­fairs Of­fi­cer of the De­fence Force, Ma­jor Al Alexan­der, said none of Al-Rawi fam­i­ly took part in the ex­er­cise. Rather, he said they were there to ob­serve what is done in emer­gency sit­u­a­tions.

Alexan­der ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, that the chil­dren dis­played "a cer­tain lev­el of cu­rios­i­ty" and were al­lowed to in­ter­act with the weapons.

"In our per­spec­tive, these are weapons that in emer­gen­cies would have to be used. We don't want chil­dren be­ing shell shocked and freez­ing when they need to move. It was re­al­ly to re­move the fear and ap­pre­hen­sion. We al­lowed them to hold it (gun)."

He said strict su­per­vi­sion was ad­hered to and the "mag­a­zines were emp­tied."