PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley is seeking a full explanation from Police Commissioner Erla Harewood-Christopher about the circumstances surrounding law enforcement officers abducting a Trinidadian business person from Barbados with the assistance of the police in the neighboring island.
Rowley said he has grave concerns about the matter involving authorized firearms dealer Brent Thomas and wants to know how he came to be taken from Barbados to face criminal charges in the twin-island republic related to possessing a series of weapons, including grenades and rifles.
Last week, High Court Justice Devindra Rampersad made scathing findings against police officers and stayed the criminal charges against Thomas, who had taken legal action against the Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions, seeking a declaration from the court that the activities of the State were “unconstitutional, unlawful, arbitrary, unnecessary and disproportionate.”
Thomas was arrested here on September 29, 2022, but was released without charge. A month later, he was forcibly removed from a hotel room in Barbados by police and then taken to the airport. Law enforcement officers from Trinidad escorted him on a Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force plane back to the country.
In his ruling on April 25, Justice Rampersad called it an “international abduction.”
“This whole matter [is] being seen by me for the first time in the media, and it being a whole police exercise which, in the process, rapidly became a sensitive court matter, I have had grave concerns about all aspects of it, but have not spoken publicly on it for obvious reasons,” Prime Minister Rowley said in a prepared response to queries from the local media.
“However, a limited Government response, as known to us, was appropriately made by the Minister of National Security, who clearly described the Government’s lack of involvement in any aspect of this piece of ongoing police work. As a follow-up, I have requested the minister to get from the Commissioner of Police a full explanation as warranted by the circumstances and situation, without getting involved in the actual police work. I expect to have that shortly and may be able to better respond to further inquiries,” he added.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Reginald Armour requested urgent advice from his ministry’s lead counsel on the merits of an appeal of Justice Rampersad’s decision to stay the charges against Thomas.
The judge had said that the matter involved severe breaches of Thomas’ constitutional rights to the extent that all criminal charges against him were stayed.
“This was an act that breached such deeply ingrained fundamental freedoms under the Constitution – the right to the protection of the law, the right to due process, and the right to freely move about,” Justice Rampersad said, adding that Thomas’ abduction and “unceremonious and humiliating return to Trinidad” was sufficient to justify the court’s intervention in the criminal process to stay the proceedings.
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