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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Griffith: No army cooperation in AG children gun probe

by

Chester Sambrano
2077 days ago
20191107
FARIS AL RAWI

FARIS AL RAWI

Abraham-Diaz

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says the gun probe in­to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al Rawi’s chil­dren han­dling high-pow­ered weapons on a mil­i­tary base, may be wrapped up by next week.

While he said the mat­ter will be closed “with­in the next week or two,” the top cop said the probe has hit a bump in the road be­cause of the lack of co­op­er­a­tion of the De­fence Force.

He said of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence was sent to the then Chief of De­fence, Staff Brigadier Gen­er­al Rod­ney Smart, on Oc­to­ber 21, 2016 ask­ing for the con­tents of a Board of In­quiry in­to the in­ci­dent.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the po­lice were seek­ing to find out the num­bers, ranks, and full names of all per­sons who were called as wit­ness­es to the hear­ings, cer­ti­fied copies of all wit­ness state­ments, re­ports, tran­scripts of pro­ceed­ings, doc­u­ments and oth­er ma­te­r­i­al ten­dered by all wit­ness­es who were par­ty to the hear­ings, as well as a cer­ti­fied copy of the find­ings/rec­om­men­da­tions of the Board of In­quiry.

How­ev­er Grif­fith said there was no re­sponse forth­com­ing.

He added that a sec­ond let­ter re­quest­ing the same in­for­ma­tion was sent, on May 11, 2018, to the new Chief of De­fence Staff Rear Ad­mi­ral Hay­den Pritchard but he too did not com­ply.

“Not even the com­mon cour­tesy of a re­sponse,” he said.

“I am fight­ing enough wars, I have no in­ten­tion of fight­ing a war with the De­fence Force but this is to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able.”

Grif­fith said he will be writ­ing to the cur­rent Chief of De­fence Staff, Air Com­modore Dar­ryl Daniel, to again re­quest the in­for­ma­tion which he said would as­sist in clos­ing the mat­ter.

“Af­ter three strikes some­body will be out.”

He then gave the as­sur­ance that this mat­ter will be closed “one way or the oth­er.”

Con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia Brigadier Gen­er­al Rod­ney Smart (Re­tired) said he can­not re­call re­ceiv­ing the cor­re­spon­dence from the po­lice but, “off the top of my head I can’t say we would have not co-op­er­at­ed. While I was there the De­fence Force would want to co­op­er­ate,” Smart said.

Rear Ad­mi­ral Hay­den Pritchard (Re­tired) who as­sumed the post in Au­gust 2017 said he would rather not com­ment on the mat­ter pub­licly but in­stead he, “will con­tact the Com­mis­sion­er and see if I could be­ing some com­fort to him.”

The pho­tographs of Al-Rawi’s chil­dren were brought to the na­tion­al spot­light in Oc­to­ber 2016 when Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal pre­sent­ed them in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives dur­ing the bud­get de­bate.

At the time Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley slammed the TTDF for the sit­u­a­tion say­ing the leak of the pho­tographs was a se­ri­ous breach of se­cu­ri­ty.

The TTDF then con­vened a Bo­rad of In­quiry to in­ves­ti­gate the sit­u­a­tion.

Af­ter the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was com­plet­ed the BOI’s Record of Pro­ceed­ings re­port was pre­sent­ed to Chief of De­fence Staff Brigadier Gen­er­al Rod­ney Smart “as a Top Se­cret doc­u­ment”.

Al-Rawi has been cleared of any wrong­do­ing in the mat­ter, a re­port from the TTDF stat­ed.

In re­spond­ing to the lat­est de­vel­op­ment, the MP who dis­closed pho­tos to the Par­lia­ment, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, said “this is very dis­turb­ing that the De­fence force re­fus­es to co­op­er­ate with the TTPS.”


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