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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Police detain 3 more in Carnival plot

by

2705 days ago
20180211
 Acting Police Commissioner during an emergency press conference at the Police Services' Administration Building in Port-of-Spain yesterday.

Acting Police Commissioner during an emergency press conference at the Police Services' Administration Building in Port-of-Spain yesterday.

Abraham Diaz

Joel Julien

The threat to dis­rupt Car­ni­val 2018 is still very much on, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams stat­ed yes­ter­day as he an­nounced that three more peo­ple are now in po­lice cus­tody fol­low­ing on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the mat­ter.

A to­tal of sev­en adult males have now been de­tained with re­spect to the threat, Williams said.

That threat, how­ev­er, is not a "ter­ror­ist threat" and did not in­volve the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) un­earthing "any threat in re­la­tion to any em­bassy or high com­mis­sion with a diplo­mat­ic pres­ence in Trinidad and To­ba­go", he said. Williams said talk of em­bassies be­ing at­tacked were sim­ply "ru­mours".

"The threat we speak about is of un­usu­al crim­i­nal acts of vary­ing forms, in­clud­ing vi­o­lence," Williams said.

Williams said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Car­ni­val 2018 threat is a "live one" and that the TTPS is "do­ing every­thing legal­ly pos­si­ble to elim­i­nate that threat".

Williams said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter is be­ing ful­ly led by the TTPS and that they have not "ful­ly en­gaged any ex­ter­nal agen­cies for ex­ten­sive sup­port".

The TTPS has not had any di­rect pres­ence from the Unit­ed States in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he said.

Speak­ing at a spe­cial me­dia brief­ing called yes­ter­day, Williams said he could not say whether the sev­en men ar­rest­ed are Mus­lim, but gave the as­sur­ance that no par­tic­u­lar group is be­ing tar­get­ed.

Williams, how­ev­er, said that two Masjids have been searched by the po­lice.

Mur­der ac­cused Ra­jaee Ali, who was moved from the Port-of-Spain jail to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison on Fri­day, is not a "per­son of in­ter­est" in the mat­ter, Williams said.

"At present, the in­ves­ti­ga­tors con­tin­ue to in­ter­view per­sons de­tained and they al­so con­tin­ue to pur­sue the gath­er­ing of ev­i­dence with a clear in­ten­tion to pros­e­cute per­sons where suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence would have been ob­tained," Williams said.

DPP be­ing con­sult­ed

Williams said the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions is be­ing con­sult­ed at in­ter­vals.

Williams said the TTPS and the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force will be out it their num­bers to en­sure Car­ni­val 2018 is safe.

"Based on the ad­vances we have made since the threat was un­cov­ered, I am in a po­si­tion to give the pub­lic the as­sur­ance that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice sup­port­ed by our part­ner agency the De­fence Force will con­tin­ue to be out in our num­bers at all Car­ni­val venues to en­sure a safe and se­cure Car­ni­val 2018," Williams said.

Williams said the agen­cies are work­ing swift­ly to en­sure the threat is dealt with.

"We are mov­ing speed­i­ly to treat with that threat, the Po­lice Ser­vice is out there in num­bers, in num­bers in­ves­ti­gat­ing and in num­bers pro­tect­ing and pro­vid­ing a safe and se­cure en­vi­ron­ment for the cit­i­zens and vis­i­tors alike," he said.

He did not dis­close if a spe­cif­ic area was go­ing to be tar­get­ed for the threat.

Williams urged cit­i­zens to re­main vig­i­lant and say if they see any­thing strange tak­ing place.

"Any mat­ter which may come to your at­ten­tion and which you con­sid­er to be strange, un­usu­al, un­to­ward or out of the or­di­nary, you should feel free to share those mat­ters to any po­lice of­fi­cer on du­ty or with­in any po­lice sta­tion or call 999," he said.

When the TTPS first in­formed the pub­lic of the threat on Thurs­day, four peo­ple were de­tained. They were still in cus­tody up to last night.

Williams said there was no fixed pe­ri­od of time to keep them.

"From the best of my knowl­edge, there is no fixed pe­ri­od of time to keep an in­di­vid­ual, what is in­tend­ed is that you need to be able to ar­rest per­sons and in a very time­ly way seek to pros­e­cute them or re­lease them," he said.

"At this point in time the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing and we are mov­ing speed­i­ly to con­clude the in­ves­ti­ga­tion with the clear in­ten­tion to pros­e­cute in­di­vid­u­als where we have suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence and that is the rea­son why we are en­gag­ing the DPP on an on­go­ing ba­sis to guide us on whether we have suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence."


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