Jesse Ramdeo

Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith, the in­ter­im leader of the new­ly formed po­lit­i­cal par­ty, Hope TT, has tak­en aim at Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for his han­dling of the mat­ter in­volv­ing firearms deal­er Brent Thomas and the cir­cum­stances which led to his ar­rest.

Thomas was de­tained last Oc­to­ber in Bar­ba­dos and sub­se­quent­ly hand­ed over to TTPS of­fi­cers. He was re­turned on a light air­craft and charged with firearm of­fences. Deal­ing with Thomas’ ar­rest in Bar­ba­dos, Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad ruled that Thomas was un­law­ful­ly ab­duct­ed in Bar­ba­dos.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­nied any in­volve­ment in the ex­er­cise and has re­quest­ed a re­port on the in­ci­dent. As part of his de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad up­held Thomas’ ap­pli­ca­tion to stay the sev­en crim­i­nal charges with “no hes­i­ta­tion,” and will deal with the as­sess­ment of dam­ages in the mat­ter this week.

Speak­ing dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Fri­day evening in Ca­roni, Hamel-Smith said he was weary of the po­si­tions tak­en by the Prime Min­is­ter and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds. “And now we hear the Cab­i­net had noth­ing to do with that, you know. Of course, the Cab­i­net had noth­ing to do with it. But did any in­di­vid­ual min­is­ter have any­thing to do with it? So watch the words of Mr Row­ley very care­ful­ly, that is the head­line, ‘No Cab­i­net in­volve­ment.’ No­body said there was but here was Mr Hinds, and I won­der where Mr Hinds gets told what to do and who he tells in turn?

Hamel-Smith al­so had his sus­pi­cions over Dr Row­ley’s vis­it to Bar­ba­dos this week­end and ques­tioned the tim­ing. The Prime Min­is­ter had clar­i­fied dur­ing a Post Cab­i­net meet­ing on Thurs­day that his trip was not linked to the mat­ter but was a va­ca­tion that had been planned.

Hamel-Smith, a for­mer sen­ate pres­i­dent who was ap­point­ed by then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, said the re­cent in­ci­dent raised red flags about the se­cu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens, “Here are in­jus­tices be­ing cre­at­ed, be­ing foist­ed on you, so we have the crim­i­nals, on the one hand, seek­ing to do their will and the Gov­ern­ment who is sup­posed to be se­cur­ing you equal­ly com­mit­ting in­jus­tice in the way they al­low jus­tice to per­vade in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“You have a dou­ble wham­my and I, per­son­al­ly, find that ter­ri­fy­ing be­cause you and I can be the next one who could be locked up for no rea­son be­cause what you do­ing is the be­gin­ning of a po­lice state.”

Hamel-Smith al­so raised con­cerns about the coun­try’s crime rate and the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.