Whistle­blow­er Ak­il Ab­dul­lah is no longer as­sist­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice in its ‘Au­dio­gate’ in­ves­ti­ga­tion, as he be­lieves the process has be­come “too po­lit­i­cal”.

In an in­ter­view with To­ba­go me­dia on Wednes­day evening, Ab­dul­lah said he would no longer be a wit­ness in the mat­ter. He com­mu­ni­cat­ed this via a let­ter which he re­vealed dur­ing the show.

Guardian Me­dia al­so at­tempt­ed to reach out to Ab­dul­lah to learn more re­gard­ing what he spoke about dur­ing the in­ter­view, but all calls went unan­swered.

In the let­ter signed by Ab­dul­lah, he stat­ed, “Af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and re­flec­tion, I have come to re­alise that my orig­i­nal state­ments must no longer be used or is use­ful, for the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion has too many po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ences and I firm­ly be­lieve that Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vices would not be best served by these kinds of in­ter­fer­ences.”

Ab­dul­lah said he was not in­duced nor was he threat­ened to re­tract all state­ments giv­en to the TTPS. How­ev­er, he said in the let­ter that he could not trust the same po­lice who failed to put him in wit­ness pro­tec­tion when threats were made to his life.

The let­ter added, “I un­der­stand the grav­i­ty of re­tract­ing my state­ments and the po­ten­tial im­pact it may have on the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I as­sure you that my in­ten­tion is to en­sure the truth pre­vails and jus­tice is served.”

Ab­dul­lah claimed that on June 9, 2023, PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil leader An­cil Den­nis of­fered to arrange a meet­ing be­tween him (Ab­dul­lah) and a “trust­ed” per­son to re­lay any in­for­ma­tion he had re­gard­ing the voice record­ings.

“In the first oc­ca­sion when he came, we spoke the Wednes­day and the Fri­day I was in Trinidad for the first time to speak with the po­lice, I didn’t even know I was go­ing to do all of that be­fore the po­lice. They told me the po­lice would be ask­ing me a few ques­tions. I had no prob­lem with that, but I don’t know how they arranged that be­cause in my es­ti­ma­tion, the po­lice is an in­de­pen­dent body and if we have per­sons or­gan­is­ing for oth­er per­sons to meet with the po­lice, to me there is con­flict there,” Ab­dul­lah said.

Ab­dul­lah was asked if he had any re­grets.

“It’s not a mat­ter of re­gret, there are too many po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ences and that could not re­solve in the kind of fair­ness that jus­tice re­quired, how­ev­er the process still con­tin­ues,” he replied.

But PNM To­ba­go leader Den­nis was seem­ing­ly un­both­ered by Ab­dul­lah’s with­draw­al. Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Den­nis said his non-co­op­er­a­tion did noth­ing to di­lute the facts.

“Let’s look at Au­dio­gate, all of us heard that record­ing that is en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of the po­lice, so any­thing that is said to con­firm or back that up I will con­sid­er it very ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion. All of us heard the record­ing and the Chief Sec­re­tary did con­firm it was his voice, the Chief Sec­re­tary even said, ‘yes there was a plot’ but then he stopped short of con­firm­ing if there was any ex­e­cu­tion of the plot. That mat­ter con­tin­ues to be un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion as far as I am con­cerned,” Den­nis posit­ed.

He al­so sought to clar­i­fy that no in­duce­ments, fi­nan­cial or oth­er­wise, were paid for Ab­dul­lah’s in­for­ma­tion.

How­ev­er, on at least three oc­ca­sions dur­ing Wednes­day’s in­ter­view, Ab­dul­lah claimed he was paid.

“Yes, there were meet­ings, pay­ments and con­ver­sa­tions,” he al­leged.

But Den­nis ve­he­ment­ly de­nied that, telling Guardian Me­dia, “He ap­proached us, no­body ap­proached him, he was not paid for any in­for­ma­tion, he was not paid for co­op­er­a­tion or any­thing of the sort.”

How­ev­er, Den­nis said fi­nan­cial in­duce­ments for whistle­blow­ers were com­mon­place in de­vel­oped na­tions and was a mod­el used by Crime Stop­pers in this coun­try.