KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle has strong­ly de­nied claims that one of his rel­a­tives was among those ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the sus­pect­ed ar­son at­tack at the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T Ltd (TSTT) com­pound in Laven­tille last Sat­ur­day.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Mar­celle said, “Ab­solute­ly not. That is just UNC pro­pa­gan­da. I have ab­solute­ly no re­la­tion to that in­di­vid­ual who was, in fact, ar­rest­ed as far as I’m con­cerned. And of course, there’s no truth to it.”

He al­so ac­cused the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and its sup­port­ers of spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion in an at­tempt to dis­tract from the re­al is­sues af­fect­ing res­i­dents of Beetham Gar­dens.

Mar­celle’s de­nial comes as po­lice sources in­di­cat­ed that the re­main­ing sus­pects de­tained in con­nec­tion with the fire were ex­pect­ed to be re­leased be­cause in­ves­ti­ga­tors had in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to charge them.

Six peo­ple were ques­tioned fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, with some sub­se­quent­ly re­leased while oth­ers re­mained in po­lice cus­tody as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ued.

Asked about the de­vel­op­ment, Mar­celle said in­ves­ti­ga­tors must be guid­ed by the ev­i­dence and the le­gal re­quire­ments for lay­ing crim­i­nal charges.

“The po­lice has their job to do and they, of course, know what is the thresh­old that they need to meet in or­der to charge per­sons. Not be­cause some­one is ar­rest­ed means in any way that they are, in fact, guilty,” he said.

Mar­celle al­so dis­missed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent, in­sist­ing that po­lit­i­cal ex­changes should not over­shad­ow the hard­ship ex­pe­ri­enced by res­i­dents who were left with­out elec­tric­i­ty for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 33 hours fol­low­ing the fire.

He said, “I think that whilst politi­cians will con­tin­ue to speak up on dif­fer­ent is­sues and so on, I think that we can­not lose sight of what is the re­al is­sue in Beetham Gar­dens. And that is that our whole com­mu­ni­ty went with­out 33 hours with­out any elec­tric­i­ty. And that is a tragedy. That is some­thing that is dev­as­tat­ing and is some­thing that we con­demn.”

Mar­celle said the pro­longed out­age re­sult­ed in sig­nif­i­cant loss­es for house­holds and small busi­ness op­er­a­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who de­pend­ed on re­frig­er­a­tion to pre­serve their goods.

He con­demned the at­tack on the TSTT com­pound and en­cour­aged any­one with in­for­ma­tion about the in­ci­dent to as­sist in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

Mar­celle al­so ac­knowl­edged the height­ened se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence but stopped short of crit­i­cis­ing the po­lice and De­fence Force.

Mar­celle said he had per­son­al­ly ob­served a sig­nif­i­cant de­ploy­ment of po­lice of­fi­cers and sol­diers dur­ing the out­age but be­lieved the au­thor­i­ties were at­tempt­ing to pre­vent fur­ther se­cu­ri­ty threats.

“I want to com­mend the res­i­dents and the con­stituents of Beetham Gar­dens for main­tain­ing their calm, main­tain­ing their pa­tience, and for al­low­ing due process to take place and for al­low­ing me to be their voice and to ad­vo­cate for them. Of course, it’s a bal­anc­ing act, and I don’t want to con­demn the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice or the mem­bers of the reg­i­ment who re­al­ly is try­ing hard with these cir­cum­stances.”

Mar­celle said he would con­tin­ue work­ing to strength­en re­la­tions be­tween the pro­tec­tive ser­vices and res­i­dents of Beetham Gar­dens.