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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Moonilal: Political figure tried to get Duke's gun taken away

by

Gail Alexander
1337 days ago
20211122
Oropouche East MP Roodal Moonilal speaks during the UNC’s Virtual Report last evening.

Oropouche East MP Roodal Moonilal speaks during the UNC’s Virtual Report last evening.

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Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Roodal Mooni­lal is bat­ting for Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots leader Wat­son Duke.

Mooni­lal has called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to say whether or not Row­ley was aware that a high po­lit­i­cal fig­ure had sought to in­flu­ence the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Firearms unit to“ take away” Duke’s li­censed firearm.

Speak­ing at the par­ty’s Vir­tu­al Fo­rum, Mooni­lal said he had in­for­ma­tion that “... a high po­lit­i­cal of­fi­cial from To­ba­go” had sought to use their in­flu­ence by “pres­sur­ing and in­tim­i­dat­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice” to seize Duke’s firearm in light of pend­ing charges at the mag­is­trate’s court.

Mooni­lal's claim came as cam­paign­ing for the De­cem­ber 6 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly polls heat­ed up. The UNC is not con­test­ing but the PDP, Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment and three oth­er par­ties are. Row­ley, at a PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil meet­ing last Sat­ur­day, al­lud­ed to the rape charge Duke is cur­rent­ly fac­ing be­fore the courts.

Last night, Mooni­lal said Row­ley had tried to “dis­arm” Duke on the plat­form with those com­ments. He queried if ef­forts had al­so been on to dis­arm Duke phys­i­cal­ly.

Mooni­lal al­so want­ed Row­ley to ex­plain whether he had knowl­edge of any high Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial who sought to in­flu­ence the process for dis­tri­b­u­tion of firearm li­cens­es - par­tic­u­lar­ly to seek to ob­tain a li­cense for a spe­cialised weapon for killing pigs.

He said the re­quest for a li­cense was turned down. He al­so queried if some­one in To­ba­go had want­ed a li­cense to sell guns and this was re­ject­ed. Mooni­lal asked if Gov­ern­ment had want­ed ex-Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith gone be­cause he “re­fused to break the law.”

Mooni­lal al­so dis­missed Row­ley’s con­cerns in his let­ter to for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair Bliss Seep­er­sad about Grif­fith. He was re­fer­ring to a let­ter which Row­ley wrote to Seep­er­sad on Sep­tem­ber 16, 2020, af­ter the PM and Grif­fith were in­volved in a pub­lic spat over the breach of COVID-19 health pro­to­cols dur­ing a pool par­ty at Bay­side Tow­ers in Co­corite.

The Oropouche East MP al­so called on TTPS to say if the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty has sent a list of po­lice of­fi­cers they rec­om­mend­ed to be sus­pend­ed from du­ty as a re­sult of on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to mis­be­hav­iour in of­fice, cor­rup­tion and oth­er se­ri­ous of­fences in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the PCA, which may war­rant sus­pen­sion of po­lice of­fi­cers im­me­di­ate­ly.

“It’s my un­der­stand­ing the PCA sub­mit­ted a list of po­lice of­fi­cers to be sus­pend­ed but they can­not be be­cause there’s no Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er in place at this time, so that per­sons who are al­leged­ly rogue cops, dirty cops and cor­rupt po­lice of­fi­cers are now on du­ty as a re­sult of the im­plo­sion of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and the in­ter­fer­ence of the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate in­to the ap­point­ment of a new com­mis­sion­er," Mooni­lal added.

“This is un­ten­able. It’s not in the in­ter­est of se­cu­ri­ty to have po­lice of­fi­cers with such se­ri­ous ac­cu­sa­tions at­tend­ing to du­ties. The PSC must act swift­ly to sub­mit the ex­ist­ing (CoP) mer­it list to the Pres­i­dent so it can be trans­mit­ted to Par­lia­ment and a de­ci­sion can be tak­en on a CoP.’’


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