Masked, heav­i­ly armed mem­bers of the Guard and Emer­gency branch locked down the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison at Pi­ar­co and con­duct­ed a raid ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

The Sun­day Guardian con­firmed that ten cells were sud­den­ly and elec­tron­i­cal­ly opened and the pris­on­ers were pulled out just af­ter 2 am and kept along the cor­ri­dors un­til the search was over just be­fore 5 am yes­ter­day.

The Sun­day Guardian was told that Ra­jaee Ali—ac­cused of the mur­der of Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal—was among the ten men whose cells were searched.

The Sun­day Guardian learned that two mo­bile phones were found in the pris­on­ers' cells and was tak­en away by the po­lice.

On Sat­ur­day just hours af­ter the search was con­duct­ed and the mo­bile phones seized, two peo­ple were held for ques­tion­ing in re­la­tion to the mur­der of the prison of­fi­cer in Mal­abar on Tues­day.

On Tues­day 50-year old Act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dent of Pris­ons Wayne Jack­son, who was as­signed to the same Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, was shot re­peat­ed­ly as he was open­ing the gate to his home. Jack­son served in the T&T Pris­ons Ser­vice for over 30 years. In­ves­ti­ga­tors said Jack­son had just pulled up in his dri­ve­way at around 6.30 pm when two gun­men am­bushed him and shot him dead. In­ves­ti­ga­tors re­cov­ered some 30 spent shells at the scene.

Dur­ing the prison lock­down, the Sun­day Guardian learned that the pris­on­ers were stripped naked and had their hands bound with tie-straps while the masked G&E mem­bers searched the cells. The masked po­lice were armed with ma­chine guns and had hand­guns strapped to their legs.

The men, ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion re­ceived from in­side the prison, were made to kneel while the cells were searched. They were then stripped naked and left with guns trained on them while the search of the cells was car­ried out.

The in­sid­er said that dur­ing a pre­vi­ous vis­it Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith had threat­ened Ali.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Grif­fith con­firmed the search. He did not de­ny that Ali was a part of the group of men whose cells were searched.

"I am aware, very aware of what you are talk­ing about," Grif­fith said when asked to con­firm the raid.

"You re­alise I'm not deny­ing that but I will say that if he is telling peo­ple that I threat­ened him then he sound­ing like he's scared.

"But I not go­ing to give any de­tails of the op­er­a­tion. I will say that we will get every­one in­volved in the death of the prison of­fi­cer."

On Thurs­day, one day af­ter the shoot­ing, Grif­fith was pic­tured with a group of masked of­fi­cers just out­side the prison. He and the spe­cialised unit of of­fi­cers con­duct­ed a walk-through at Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison on Thurs­day. While Grif­fith did not say too much about the walk-through, a me­dia re­lease from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice soon af­ter his vis­it said that the ex­er­cise was con­duct­ed in a bid to as­cer­tain ar­eas where po­lice of­fi­cers will be de­ployed with­in the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison.

It was re­port­ed on Fri­day that Grif­fith had im­plant­ed a spe­cial unit of po­lice of­fi­cers in­to the prison to en­sure ex­tra se­cu­ri­ty.

The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that the ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty put in place by Grif­fith is to en­sure a lock­down of in­for­ma­tion and con­tra­band in and out of the prison, and that "no shots" can be called from be­hind prison walls.