NADALEEN SINGH

nadaleen.singh@guardian.co.tt

British High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T, Tim Stew, yes­ter­day con­firmed that the ter­ror threat made on T&T’s Car­ni­val was se­ri­ous enough for the gov­ern­ments of T&T, the Unit­ed King­dom, Aus­tralia, Cana­da and the Unit­ed States to hold high lev­el talks on se­cu­ri­ty.

Stew’s con­fir­ma­tion came a day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley met with a diplo­mat­ic del­e­ga­tion, which in­clud­ed Stew, to dis­cuss the se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges which arose just be­fore the Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties.

Speak­ing dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion of the Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tion In­dex 2018 at the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness in Mt Hope, Stew said he had been fol­low­ing the me­dia re­portage on the is­sue, not­ing there were some who seemed to be dis­mis­sive of it. To those who did not be­lieve the threat was re­al, he said: “I have one mes­sage, it is time for you to get re­al.”

Speak­ing about re­cent re­ports of probes in­to ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing in T&T, Stew said: “Ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing, whether small or large, brings new threats to our shores, as we have seen to my re­gret most re­cent­ly here in Trinidad. Sim­ply, with­out fund­ing ter­ror­ists can­not car­ry out their evil act.”

On the meet­ing with Row­ley and the in­put of the oth­er diplo­mats, Stew said: “We saw the threat that was made against Car­ni­val this year, just a few weeks ago. Those sorts of threats are in­ter­na­tion­al in their na­ture and we have to stand to­geth­er.”

He said dur­ing the course of the threat, the British High Com­mis­sion was in con­tact with some Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters to find out what sup­port, “we (the British High Com­mis­sion) could bring to help the Gov­ern­ment.”

Stew sup­port­ed Row­ley’s po­si­tion that the se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tion to block the threat was, “gov­ern­ment-led.” He added that the British gov­ern­ment was pre­pared to put its re­sources and ex­per­tise at T&T’s dis­pos­al if it was nec­es­sary. He said Wednes­day’s meet­ing with Row­ley was a fol­low up to the col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“It was a spe­cif­ic ini­tia­tive by the four na­tions that we want­ed to have fur­ther en­gage­ment right at the very top of gov­ern­ment,” Stew said.

Not­ing that T&T and Britain had signed a bi­lat­er­al MoU last No­vem­ber cov­er­ing a range of se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion ini­tia­tive be­tween the two coun­tries, Stew added: “We are in the process of get­ting that ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed.”

Stew said once the MoU is im­ple­ment­ed it would pro­vide the frame­work for co­op­er­a­tion for both coun­tries on se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters, in­clud­ing ter­ror­ism and cy­ber­crime.

On Feb­ru­ary 8, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice said it had cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion on a plot to dis­rupt Car­ni­val 2018 and 15 peo­ple were sub­se­quent­ly de­tained for about six days dur­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The PM and his Gov­ern­ment have main­tained this was no jok­ing mat­ter.