Chester Sam­bra­no

Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) Gary Grif­fith has called for the po­lice of­fi­cers in­volved in the Brent Thomas "ab­duc­tion" to be sus­pend­ed and in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

In a state­ment, Grif­fith said, "As I have said be­fore, be­ing a for­mer Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter and CoP, it is im­pos­si­ble that Hinds did not know, that he didn’t ap­prove and that he didn’t con­cur in the Brent Thomas “ab­duc­tion mat­ter."

So Hinds’ de­nial of any in­volve­ment, which oc­curred in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, he said, means that "he is ei­ther play­ing with words in the same way he ini­tial­ly claimed that he didn’t re­quest of the CoP firearms li­cences for over a dozen per­sons, which he had to re­cant at a lat­er time, when ev­i­dence arose to dis­pute his claims, or the of­fi­cers in­volved went rogue and act­ed out­side of the law, since no po­lice of­fi­cer, in­clud­ing the Com­mis­sion­er can au­tho­rise po­lice of­fi­cers to leave Trinidad and To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly to par­tic­i­pate in a joint op­er­a­tion with the Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force, with­out the knowl­edge, con­cur­rence and per­mis­sion of the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty."

Grif­fith said if of­fi­cers went rogue, then he called up­on CoP Christo­pher to im­me­di­ate­ly sus­pend and launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to those of­fi­cers, and any oth­er mem­bers of the TTPS who were in­volved, be­cause as she would know and Hinds him­self will al­so know, no po­lice of­fi­cer, in­clud­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, has the au­thor­i­ty to au­tho­rise po­lice of­fi­cers to leave the coun­try.

"If Min­is­ter Hinds is be­ing less than truth­ful how­ev­er, I urge the of­fi­cers di­rect­ly in­volved, to not be ma­nip­u­lat­ed or in­tim­i­dat­ed in­to si­lence, to seek le­gal coun­sel, and to speak out now, since, whether it’s now or some­time in the near fu­ture, all will be re­vealed, and the truth will come out, so do not be any­one’s po­lit­i­cal scape­goat," he said.