?Three sol­diers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment are to be tried by or­di­nary courts mar­tial, in ac­cor­dance with the pro­vi­sions of Sec­tion 84 of the De­fence Act. In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Cap­tain Al Alexan­der, civ­il mil­i­tary af­fairs of­fi­cer at the T&T De­fence Force, said the sol­diers elect­ed to be tried by mil­i­tary courts mar­tial are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore the pre­sid­ing Judge Ad­vo­cate Ian Roach, the pres­i­dent Ma­jor K Weekes and oth­er mem­bers of a mil­i­tary tri­bunal. Pros­e­cut­ing on be­half of the De­fence Force will be Ma­jor Shel­don Ram­nanan. The state­ment did not dis­close what crimes the sol­diers were be­ing charged with, as they have to ap­pear in court and have the charges read to them be­fore their names and the al­leged crimes can be re­vealed.

A court mar­tial refers to a mil­i­tary court which has the pow­er to ei­ther de­ter­mine pun­ish­ments for mil­i­tary per­son­nel who are found guilty of an of­fence or dis­miss charges based on the ev­i­dence and the case pre­sent­ed be­fore the court. A mil­i­tary source said the De­fence Force had not held a court mar­tial for more than ten years be­cause of the ab­sence of an at­tor­ney among the ranks. The last sol­dier to face a court mar­tial was Leon Chan­dler in 1998, who was cashiered and dis­charged.