A plot by pris­on­ers to kill five prison of­fi­cers has been un­cov­ered by the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team.

In­for­ma­tion from a con­fi­den­tial re­port sug­gests that the threat is re­lat­ed to an in­ci­dent which took place at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca where a cell­phone was con­fis­cat­ed from a gang mem­ber.

The of­fi­cers have been alert­ed about the threats and se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures have been put in place to pro­tect them.

Com­ment­ing on the lat­est threat, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said he had al­ready spo­ken to both the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Dane Clarke and Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith about the con­tents of the re­port.

“Threats of vi­o­lence to any prison of­fi­cer or any of­fi­cer at­tached to any of the ser­vices un­der the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty will not be tol­er­at­ed. I have asked that an in­ter-agency ap­proach be de­ployed to deal with this in­ci­dent. This is be­ing treat­ed as a pri­or­i­ty and re­sources are be­ing de­ployed to deal with the threat,” Young stat­ed.