Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says he is prepar­ing to take le­gal ac­tion against the at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing de­tained pris­ons su­per­vi­sor Garth Gua­da, over al­le­ga­tions that he met with in­car­cer­at­ed gang lead­ers ahead of the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“I am prepar­ing to sue the at­tor­ney. I am now or­gan­is­ing to send her a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter,” Alexan­der said when con­tact­ed for com­ment on the al­le­ga­tions.

Alexan­der had pre­vi­ous­ly con­firmed that he had con­sult­ed with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie on the is­sue be­fore mov­ing for­ward.

Last Fri­day, Gua­da, through his at­tor­ney Krys­tal Primus, al­leged that Alexan­der had sev­er­al clan­des­tine meet­ings with in­car­cer­at­ed al­leged gang mem­bers short­ly be­fore as­sum­ing pub­lic of­fice.

Gua­da is cur­rent­ly be­ing de­tained for al­leged­ly pro­vid­ing as­sis­tance to a gang un­der the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE). Primus is ar­gu­ing that her client’s de­ten­tion was based on a per­son­al vendet­ta Alexan­der had against him, af­ter he (Gua­da) re­port­ed Alexan­der’s al­leged meet­ings to se­nior prison and po­lice of­fi­cers.

Alexan­der yes­ter­day said the onus was on le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tives to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for ver­i­fy­ing claims be­fore re­leas­ing them pub­licly.

“Putting out facts in the pub­lic do­main should be the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of every cit­i­zen, at­tor­ney or not. Even if some­one give you in­struc­tions, it is your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to do your fact-find­ing be­fore you put it out in the court of pub­lic opin­ion, hop­ing to catch your feel­ings, per­son­al, in­ti­mate or oc­ca­sion­al love for fame or mon­ey,” he said.

“If you was hop­ing to get my at­ten­tion by the use of so­cial me­dia, well you didn’t. All I see it as, is bits of pa­per, bits of pa­per, ly­ing on the floor. If the at­tor­ney knows who is the Rock from WWE, she can now take her lies, fold them up re­al nice, turn them side­ways and ask the Rock what to do with them next,” he added.

Alexan­der main­tained he will not be dis­tract­ed by the lat­est de­vel­op­ment.

“I will con­tin­ue to do my job and pro­tect the peo­ple of this good na­tion, as well as in­tro­duce laws so my cit­i­zens can bet­ter pro­tect them­selves, pro­vide re­sources to our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty de­part­ments and make sure chil­dren and teach­ers are all safe in schools etc. I just want every cit­i­zen to feel and ex­pe­ri­ence that sense of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty at all lev­els and to en­joy a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life.”

The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has called for an im­me­di­ate and in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion af­ter the re­ports sur­faced.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued over the week­end, the PNM not­ed that re­ports of such meet­ings were brought to the at­ten­tion of both the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Pris­ons Au­thor­i­ty. The par­ty de­scribed the al­le­ga­tions as strik­ing “at the very heart of our na­tion’s democ­ra­cy and the in­tegri­ty of our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems.”

The par­ty has de­mand­ed an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion, a pub­lic state­ment from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on whether the mat­ter has been brought be­fore the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil and what ac­tion has been tak­en, and clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice on whether the TTPS re­ceived any re­port and if a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way.

At­tempts to con­tact CoP Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.