Jesse Ramdeo

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Stu­art Young has de­nied claims by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion en­abled the for­ma­tion of a crim­i­nal syn­di­cate in­side the prison sys­tem by group­ing gang lead­ers to­geth­er in Build­ing 13 at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison.

Speak­ing dur­ing Mon­day’s par­lia­men­tary de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the state of emer­gency, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused Young of clus­ter­ing high-risk in­mates dur­ing his tenure, say­ing this cre­at­ed con­di­tions for gang co­or­di­na­tion and crim­i­nal op­er­a­tions be­hind bars.

“Then, as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the mem­ber brought his pen out. What did he do? He took all the main king­pins and he put them in a build­ing called Build­ing 13,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She claimed the in­mates were al­lowed to com­mu­ni­cate, or­gan­ise, and even en­joyed ac­cess to lux­u­ry ameni­ties. “All these king­pins co­or­di­nat­ed, be­came a syn­di­cate when you placed them in that Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, Build­ing 13.”

In re­sponse at a me­dia brief­ing on Tues­day, Young said the Prime Min­is­ter’s as­ser­tions were “en­tire­ly fic­ti­tious.” He said the use of Build­ing 13 was an ini­tia­tive de­vel­oped dur­ing his time in of­fice in con­sul­ta­tion with the prison and po­lice com­mis­sion­ers, and that in­mates were de­lib­er­ate­ly kept in sep­a­rate cells and barred from in­ter­act­ing.

“Masked po­lice of­fi­cers were de­ployed on a ro­ta­tion sys­tem, along­side prison of­fi­cers, and the in­di­vid­u­als in ques­tion were placed sep­a­rate­ly,” he said. “It worked for a time.”

Young al­so re­vealed that the gov­ern­ment had re­ceived pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters short­ly af­ter Build­ing 13 was brought in­to use, but said the le­gal threats “went nowhere” as all pro­ce­dures were law­ful­ly ex­e­cut­ed.

He added that prison op­er­a­tions fall un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the prison ser­vice and called for it to be prop­er­ly re­sourced to car­ry out its man­date.