DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to whether Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der had prop­er clear­ance to vis­it in­mates at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison dur­ing his tenure as a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said the probe must es­tab­lish whether the vis­its were for­mal­ly au­tho­rised by the po­lice and prison com­mis­sion­ers and whether they con­tin­ued af­ter Alexan­der was elect­ed Tu­na­puna MP.

“The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice has to tell the coun­try whether there is any writ­ten au­tho­ri­sa­tion from the of­fice­hold­er at that point in time al­low­ing for such vis­its to take place—and whether he, the cur­rent of­fice hold­er, al­so au­tho­rised those vis­its post-elec­tion,” Gon­za­les said.

He dis­missed sug­ges­tions that in­ter­nal TTPS cor­re­spon­dence con­sti­tut­ed valid au­tho­ri­sa­tion.

“Cor­re­spon­dence mov­ing from a se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent to an as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­er or deputy com­mis­sion­er of po­lice can­not be the au­tho­ri­sa­tion you are ask­ing for. At the end of the day, it is the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice cor­re­spond­ing with the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons in or­der to al­low for this to hap­pen.”

Gon­za­les ad­mit­ted he had not re­viewed Alexan­der’s le­gal re­sponse but in­sist­ed that on­ly a thor­ough, trans­par­ent in­ves­ti­ga­tion would ease pub­lic con­cern.

The con­tro­ver­sy stems from al­le­ga­tions by act­ing pris­ons as­sis­tant su­per­in­ten­dent Garth Gua­da, now de­tained un­der the State of Emer­gency, for al­leged­ly as­sist­ing a gang. Through his at­tor­ney, Krys­tal Primus, Gua­da claimed Alexan­der held clan­des­tine meet­ings with in­car­cer­at­ed gang mem­bers short­ly be­fore the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion and that his own de­ten­tion was linked to a per­son­al vendet­ta.

Primus fur­ther al­leged that Gua­da was de­nied le­gal ac­cess and pre­vent­ed from at­tend­ing his Re­view Tri­bunal hear­ing, and that Alexan­der, be­fore as­sum­ing of­fice, had re­quest­ed un­su­per­vised vis­its to the prison—re­quests Gua­da re­port­ed­ly blocked.

Ac­cord­ing to Primus, Gua­da lat­er re­layed the mat­ter to TTPS in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cers, cre­at­ing a con­flict of in­ter­est once Alexan­der be­came min­is­ter.

Alexan­der has de­nied the claims and sig­nalled his in­ten­tion to take le­gal ac­tion. His le­gal team, led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan, de­scribed the al­le­ga­tions as “un­law­ful, un­rea­son­able, and vi­ola­tive of prin­ci­ples of jus­tice.”

At­tor­ney Jared Ja­groo al­so re­ject­ed claims that Gua­da was ever pre­vent­ed from con­sult­ing his lawyer or at­tend­ing the tri­bunal, in­sist­ing all in­ter­ac­tions at the prison were car­ried out law­ful­ly for in­tel­li­gence pur­pos­es in Alexan­der’s for­mer role as a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer.