GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) Gary Grif­fith has raised con­cerns about the pos­si­ble ex­is­tence of sleep­er cells in the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA).

Re­spond­ing di­rect­ly to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who de­liv­ered a state­ment on the SSA in Par­lia­ment last Wednes­day, the for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er spec­u­lat­ed: “You have tar­get­ed the SSA but it still ex­ists. We do not know if sleep­er cells are still there.”

He fur­ther claimed: “Cu­mu­to Bar­racks was un­der the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit when the PNM Gov­ern­ment took over. They hand­ed over Cu­mu­to Bar­racks to the SSA. By do­ing that hun­dreds and thou­sands of rounds (of am­mu­ni­tion) ... the SSA be­came the cus­to­di­an for this am­mu­ni­tion, they be­came the cus­to­di­an for hun­dreds of weapons that be­longed to the De­fence Force and the po­lice.”

Dr Row­ley told Par­lia­ment the SSA had been com­pro­mised with the es­tab­lish­ment of a mil­i­tarised op­er­a­tional unit and had been in­fil­trat­ed by a re­li­gious cult that want­ed to re­place the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship. He al­so said an au­dit in­to the SSA showed the agency pur­chased high-grade mil­i­tary bolt-ac­tion ri­fles com­plete with si­lencers and oth­er ac­ces­sories, as well as an in­creased amount of am­mu­ni­tion.

In re­sponse, Grif­fith con­tend­ed that peo­ple were be­ing de­monised for at­tend­ing church.

“That’s what we have reached in this coun­try. It is now be­ing seen as a crime. We are now try­ing to la­bel church-go­ing peo­ple as a Jim Jones cult,” he said.

Grif­fith claimed that out of the 23 peo­ple fired from the SSA, on­ly two were high­ly in­volved in the church and all of them had passed poly­graph tests.

“This shows T&T that evil is in­vad­ing our land, that some will see God-fear­ing peo­ple and try to tar­get them,” he said.

The for­mer CoP ac­cused Row­ley of be­ing “ob­sessed” with him. He al­so won­dered why the Gov­ern­ment was “still keep­ing the SSA” af­ter un­earthing such in­for­ma­tion.

“It shows the dou­ble stan­dards. So, you re­move SORT (Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team) which was in­stru­men­tal in peg­ging back every crim­i­nal el­e­ment in this coun­try. It was re­placed by some­thing known as the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tional Task Force (NOTF),” he said.

“Their biggest suc­cess in the last two years was ar­rest­ing an old man for sell­ing books on the pave­ment.”

He al­so ques­tioned how an au­dit could have been done in­to the SSA when the “per­son who was in charge of the SSA you have not spo­ken to.”

Grif­fith ap­pealed to re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions and God-fear­ing peo­ple to “un­der­stand what is be­ing done to this coun­try and what was be­ing said by the evil el­e­ments.”