Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) agents, in­clud­ing fired for­mer di­rec­tor Roger Best, are gear­ing up to sue the State.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the 28 em­ploy­ees dis­missed by the State have been seek­ing le­gal coun­sel over their dis­missal from the agency. Among those em­ploy­ees are Pas­tor Ian Brown, the self-de­clared spy for the SSA, and his son, who was al­so em­ployed at the agency, for­mer di­rec­tor of in­tel­li­gence Joanne Daniel, as well as Best.

On Ju­ly 3, in Par­lia­ment, Dr Row­ley read in­to Hansard a state­ment on an au­dit con­duct­ed on the SSA by di­rec­tor Brigadier An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer. The au­dit re­vealed that the agency un­der Best amassed mil­i­tary-grade weapons and am­mu­ni­tion and op­er­at­ed a high­ly trained and mil­i­tarised so-called “Tac­ti­cal Re­sponse Unit.”

He al­so said there were dis­turb­ing prac­tices of nepo­tism and op­por­tunism lead­ing to a con­cen­tra­tion of mem­bers of one church be­ing hired by the SSA, in­stances of dis­hon­esty and deep de­cep­tion, and that the SSA was in­creas­ing­ly in­ca­pable of se­cur­ing pub­lic trust.

“Such per­sons be­longed to a cult which was arm­ing it­self while preach­ing a doc­trine for trained mil­i­tary and para­mil­i­tary per­son­nel with a re­li­gious call­ing to be the most suit­able per­sons to re­place the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship. They were ex­ert­ing high lev­els of in­flu­ence on the af­fairs of the agency to the detri­ment of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty,” Dr Row­ley said.

Both Brown and Best are el­ders of Brown’s church, the Jerusalem Bride Church. In ad­di­tion, Dr Row­ley said that “28 em­ploy­ees of the SSA were ter­mi­nat­ed, ei­ther for vi­o­la­tions of the SSA Act and Reg­u­la­tions or for anom­alous re­cruit­ment or faulty pro­mo­tion process­es and prac­tices.”

Best, who has been silent since he was sus­pend­ed from the agency on March 2 and sub­se­quent­ly fired on May 18, in his first state­ment on Sun­day told Guardian Me­dia last week, “The men­tion of me lead­ing a coup or any form of desta­bil­i­sa­tion is not on­ly pre­pos­ter­ous but lu­di­crous.”

Guardian Me­dia was told that the em­ploy­ees feel ag­griev­ed that their pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tions have been af­fect­ed by Dr Row­ley’s state­ment, which would af­fect their fu­ture em­ploy­ment.

So far, the State has on­ly been able to lay one set of charges against for­mer SSA em­ploy­ees: Brown, Sgt Sher­win Wal­dron, and Su­san Portell-Grif­fith were charged in con­nec­tion with the “trans­fer­ring” of four “pro­hib­it­ed firearms” from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to the SSA. While Best was de­tained and ques­tioned, he was sub­se­quent­ly re­leased, as there was no ev­i­dence to charge him with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.

How­ev­er, Dr Row­ley con­firmed that sev­er­al po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions were tak­ing place with re­gard to the SSA. One of those in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­volves mur­ders linked to the agency through the Tac­ti­cal Unit.

The Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed last week that three mur­ders—the 2019 mur­ders of Bryan Fe­lix and Aleem Khan, whose bod­ies were found in a forest­ed part of Cu­mu­to on Oc­to­ber 13, 2019, and CCTV cam­era con­trac­tor Andy Daniel—were linked to the SSA probe. In­ves­ti­ga­tors are re­port­ed­ly look­ing at the sim­i­lar­i­ty in pat­terns be­tween the mur­ders of Daniel and al­leged gang­ster An­thon “Bom­bay” Boney in Sep­tem­ber 2021.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Dau­rius Figueira last Sun­day ac­cused Dr Row­ley of act­ing pre­ma­ture­ly in re­veal­ing some of the find­ings of the on­go­ing au­dit in­to the op­er­a­tions of the SSA, es­pe­cial­ly un­der the cloak of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, when asked about this, said, “I didn’t think that the Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments were pre­ma­ture. We’ve been deal­ing with this for months now. The Prime Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty a few months ago his pre­lim­i­nary un­der­stand­ing of the facts and promised that he would keep the na­tion abreast.” 

Hinds has main­tained that the agency, which re­ports to him, would not be shut down de­spite the de­ba­cle.