Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

An­tigua’s Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Le­gal Af­fairs, Pub­lic Safe­ty and Labour is sum­mon­ing the im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer who was on du­ty dur­ing the re­cent air­port in­ci­dent in­volv­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. The of­fi­cer is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide a de­tailed ac­count of what tran­spired “to put the mat­ter to rest once and for all.”

This up­date came yes­ter­day from the of­fice of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Sir Stead­roy Ben­jamin, when Guardian Me­dia re­quest­ed a sta­tus re­port on the mat­ter.

The de­vel­op­ment fol­lows re­marks from An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne, who stat­ed that the in­for­ma­tion in An­tigua’s im­mi­gra­tion sys­tem which led to ad­di­tion­al ques­tion­ing of Row­ley did not orig­i­nate lo­cal­ly, but was of “for­eign ori­gin.”

On Ju­ly 21, Row­ley pub­licly de­mand­ed an­swers from the Gov­ern­ment and po­lice af­ter be­ing de­layed twice at VC Bird In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port while in tran­sit to and from Montser­rat. He said he had been in­formed he was flagged on an In­ter­pol watch­list and ques­tioned how that oc­curred, call­ing for his name to be re­moved.

Up­on his re­turn to T&T, Row­ley launched his own in­ves­ti­ga­tion through Cari­com con­tacts. He ar­gued that In­ter­pol would on­ly have been alert­ed through doc­u­men­ta­tion sub­mit­ted by au­thor­i­ties—ei­ther in T&T or an­oth­er coun­try—and ac­cused the T&T Gov­ern­ment and its At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of be­ing re­spon­si­ble.

Both the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­nied any in­volve­ment. An­tigua al­so con­firmed that it had not placed Row­ley on any In­ter­pol list.

AG Ben­jamin, who al­so serves as Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs, Pub­lic Safe­ty and Labour, pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed a re­port was be­ing re­quest­ed from An­tigua’s Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, which falls un­der his min­istry. As of yes­ter­day, the re­port had not yet been re­ceived. How­ev­er, the AG’s of­fice con­firmed the of­fi­cer in ques­tion would now be called in to pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive state­ment on the events of the day.

“So this mat­ter can be laid to rest once and for all,” an of­fi­cial in the AG’s of­fice told Guardian Me­dia.

An­tiguan au­thor­i­ties al­so cit­ed com­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Browne to The Dai­ly Ob­serv­er, where he clar­i­fied that Row­ley was not de­tained, and that the ad­di­tion­al scruti­ny was prompt­ed by ex­ter­nal da­ta in the im­mi­gra­tion por­tal.

“My un­der­stand­ing is that there was cer­tain in­for­ma­tion with­in our im­mi­gra­tion por­tal that did not em­anate from with­in An­tigua that caused im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers to do fur­ther in­quiries,” Browne was quot­ed as say­ing.

He added that the in­for­ma­tion had since been re­moved from the sys­tem and em­pha­sised that Row­ley was treat­ed with re­spect at all times. Browne said he be­lieved Row­ley was “quite pleased with the lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism” shown by An­tiguan im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers.

Row­ley did not re­spond to queries on Browne’s state­ments, but re­post­ed the T&T Guardian’s re­port on the mat­ter to his Face­book page.

T&T of­fi­cials silent as ques­tions mount

The Cari­com Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (IM­PACS)—which sup­ports mem­ber states in in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and in­for­ma­tion shar­ing—de­clined to com­ment when con­tact­ed about the in­ci­dent. IM­PACS would not con­firm whether Row­ley had been flagged on an In­ter­pol watch­list, who may have sub­mit­ted such da­ta, or whether it had been no­ti­fied.

Its Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Di­vi­sion stat­ed the mat­ter was a “na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sue” and re­ferred all queries to “the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter or Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so re­ceived no re­sponse to writ­ten ques­tions sent to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, which asked whether her Gov­ern­ment had launched any in­ves­ti­ga­tion, what in­for­ma­tion had been re­ceived since the in­ci­dent emerged, and whether steps were be­ing tak­en in light of the “for­eign ori­gin” claim.

No re­spons­es were re­ceived from At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie or Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der ei­ther, though What­sApp in­di­ca­tors con­firmed that the mes­sage sent to Alexan­der was read.

Se­nior UNC of­fi­cials ac­knowl­edged the is­sue re­quires clar­i­fi­ca­tion.

“An­swers are need­ed, or Row­ley will just keep beat­ing it and it’ll nev­er end,” one of­fi­cial said. “Talk to de boss,” they added, re­fer­ring fur­ther ques­tions to Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

When asked to re­spond to PM Browne’s lat­est re­marks, TTPS of­fi­cials said the ser­vice “had al­ready re­spond­ed on the is­sue,” cit­ing its me­dia re­lease is­sued on Ju­ly 21.