SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Trea­son! That’s how Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark de­scribed re­ports that a group of Is­raeli se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts al­leged­ly hacked in­to the email of for­mer prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion.

A news­pa­per ar­ti­cle pub­lshed yes­ter­day stat­ed that Team Jorge, a covert Is­raeli group con­sist­ing of se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts, claimed to have hacked in­to the email of Per­sad-Bisses­sar while she served as prime min­is­ter from 2010 to 2015.

In a pre­sen­ta­tion to jour­nal­ists who were pos­ing as po­ten­tial clients, the man un­masked as leader of the op­er­a­tion, Tal “Jorge” Hanan, claimed he hacked the email of the chief of staff of Per­sad-Bisses­sar and sent mes­sages to cre­ate po­lit­i­cal up­heaval. It was al­so al­leged in the re­port that a Trinida­di­an busi­ness­man with deep po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions to the PNM paid Team Jorge to ex­e­cute the dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign.

Mark said if the al­le­ga­tions are true, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has ques­tions to an­swer and must “clear the air on these very se­ri­ous and trou­bling state­ments.”

He added: “It is crim­i­nal. If this turns out to be true . . . this is tan­ta­mount to trea­son. I am say­ing that these are mat­ters that must at­tract the at­ten­tion of the po­lice, as it is, it will at­tract the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty as to the na­ture and char­ac­ter of the regime that we cur­rent­ly have in of­fice.”

Al­most a decade ago, then Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley pre­sent­ed in an email thread of 31 emails he claimed was the cor­re­spon­dence of crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy im­pli­cat­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar and mem­bers of her gov­ern­ment.

The emails al­leged they con­spired with oth­er gov­ern­ment mem­bers with the aim of killing a jour­nal­ist, brib­ing the di­rec­tor of pub­lic pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), be­ing in­volved in cor­rup­tion, per­form­ing acts in breach of the In­tegri­ty Act, act­ing dis­hon­est­ly, be­ing guilty of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, among oth­er is­sues.

Mark called on Row­ley, who brought the email­gate scan­dal to the Par­lia­ment, to come clean.

“We call on the Prime Min­is­ter who brought email­gate to the Par­lia­ment to clear the air on this mat­ter be­cause an Is­raeli is ad­mit­ting that they were hired by a big, pow­er­ful busi­ness­man with deep fi­nan­cial pock­ets and con­nect­ed to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment to destablilse . . . un­der­mine the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

The Sen­a­tor said this could have led the UNC to lose the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

“That is a cy­ber­crime. Up to now, we do not have up-to-date cy­ber­crime leg­is­la­tion on our statute books be­cause they brought leg­is­la­tion to en­slave the coun­try. And we will have no part of it,” he said.

Mark said the PNM ac­cused the UNC of re­tain­ing Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca for da­ta min­ing in­for­ma­tion while they were in gov­ern­ment.

“And they went all out to see if they could pros­e­cute who­ev­er they could pros­e­cute. They held a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee. The po­lice went all over the world look­ing for a pink hair fel­la. They can’t find that pink hair fel­la at all. They went as far as the Unit­ed King­dom look­ing for the pink hair man who made all these al­le­ga­tions and pro­duced a book.”

He promised that more will be re­vealed in the UNC’s Mon­day Night Fo­rum by Per­sad-Bisses­sar and a team of lawyers.

“The par­ty will take a deep dive in­to this mat­ter in the com­ing hours,” Mark said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the mat­ter, PNM PRO Faris told Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp: “I re­gret I am out of the coun­try trav­el­ling on of­fi­cial busi­ness and have lim­it­ed ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion and the me­dia cov­er­age tem­porar­i­ly.”