Sascha Wil­son

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she has un­earthed dis­turb­ing in­for­ma­tion that the po­lice are spy­ing on the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. How­ev­er, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob is deny­ing this claim.

Show­ing a doc­u­ment to sup­port­ers protest­ing at the Debe round­about yes­ter­day, she said it was a con­fi­den­tial memo from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) de­tail­ing ar­eas where UNC protests over the hike in gas prices were tak­ing place.

She first showed a re­port from The Guardian news­pa­per based in the Unit­ed King­dom that con­firmed Eng­land Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son was a tar­get of the spy­ware Pe­ga­sus, which she re­cent­ly claimed was al­so be­ing used to il­le­gal­ly spy on T&T cit­i­zens re­cent­ly.

“This spy­ware hacked in­to a phone can turn your phone in­to a lis­ten­ing de­vice and there­fore this Gov­ern­ment con­firmed that they bought the Pe­ga­sus spy­ware, ma­co­ing every­body. They will in­fil­trate your phone sys­tem. They will in­fect your phone sys­tem with their hack­ing,” she warned.

Say­ing she had even more dis­turb­ing ev­i­dence, Per­sad-Bisses­sar then raised the memo from TTPS in­tel­li­gence sources about the UNC’s protests.

“They could ma­co all they want but we have noth­ing to be afraid of. We stand up for the rights of the peo­ple...We are obey­ing the law. We want to make it very clear, we have giv­en in­struc­tions through­out, do not block the road­ways and the high­ways we are peace­ful­ly protest­ing.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the po­lice can­not ar­rest mur­der­ers and thieves but they did a spe­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tion on UNC ac­tiv­i­ties. She ex­plained that the memo stat­ed that peo­ple are be­ing con­tact­ed by the UNC from sev­er­al num­bers. One of the num­bers was list­ed on the memo but she and oth­er peo­ple called the num­ber and got no re­sponse.

“So I’m ask­ing this Con­sta­ble Clement re­spon­si­ble for this vi­o­la­tion of the law for ma­co­ing and spy­ing. This act of spy­ing on cit­i­zens is a po­lit­i­cal mo­tive,” she claimed.

Re­call­ing that Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal re­vealed last Mon­day that the Gov­ern­ment was spend­ing $35 to $40 mil­lion to spy on peo­ple and to pros­e­cute UNC peo­ple, she de­clared, “We are not afraid. We are law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.”

She added, “There are peo­ple’s names. They call­ing lo­ca­tions where we are go­ing to be meet­ing to­day. They talk­ing about peo­ple be­ing en­cour­aged to have plac­ards. Hold them up! A plac­ard is not against the law. We are not on the road­ways. We are not on the high­ways and we are UNC and proud.”

How­ev­er, Ja­cob de­nied Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claims and dis­tanced the TTPS from the doc­u­ment she re­ferred to. Rather, he said the po­lice re­ceived in­for­ma­tion about planned UNC protests and act­ed to en­sure those who were par­tic­i­pat­ing were safe in the event there were ri­val groups who may have want­ed to in­ter­vene with the pro­test­ers.

Ja­cob ex­plained, “It was out there on so­cial me­dia and oth­er places that there was sup­posed to be a protest tak­ing place so what we did is that we put our of­fi­cers out there ear­ly and as they see any de­vel­op­ments, they call in the in­for­ma­tion to our op­er­a­tional cen­tres and our se­niors were in­formed and we de­ployed per­sons ac­cord­ing­ly.”

He made it clear that the po­lice ac­tions had noth­ing to do with the doc­u­ment.

“I heard about some doc­u­ment cir­cu­lat­ing. I am not aware of that doc­u­ment. The po­lice did not act on that doc­u­ment. The doc­u­ment came out some­time af­ter we al­ready put every­thing in place from the in­for­ma­tion flow­ing from the ground. I don’t know any­thing about that. I can­not say any­thing about that. There are oth­er in­tel­li­gence agen­cies who you could ad­dress but not the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice,” he said.

Ja­cob al­so con­firmed the UNC did not ap­ply for any per­mis­sion to stage the protests. How­ev­er, he said the protests were peace­ful, there was no march­ing and no pub­lic meet­ing, so the po­lice did not stop them.

How­ev­er, he ad­vised all and sundry, re­gard­less of their po­si­tion, to obey the law and do the right thing.

“We may be send­ing a wrong mes­sage to oth­er per­sons who may con­sid­er us as ex­em­plars in so­ci­ety,” he added.

Ja­cob urged peo­ple plan­ning such events to in­form the po­lice for their own safe­ty and pro­tec­tion.

“Be­cause there may be ri­val groups who are op­posed to what they do­ing and the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act caters for that to pre­vent any sort of any un­to­ward sit­u­a­tion that may oc­cur and that is why they said to ap­ply to the po­lice so that the po­lice will be aware and can pro­vide the nec­es­sary se­cu­ri­ty.”