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http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/2014-06- ... -tiesObama envoy: Dana’s hit ordered by foreign drug cartel
Special state prosecutor Dana Seetahal was murdered by a trans-national drug organisation with operations in T&T, says the United States Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield. Speaking from Washington, DC, in a teleconference with Caribbean journalists yesterday, Ambassador Brownfield said: “Those in Trinidad would know that I visited your country two months ago and two days after I left there was the brutal murder of Ms Dana Seetahal. She was murdered by a trans-national drug organisation.”
Asked by the T&T Guardian to elaborate on this suggestion, Brownfield, who has responsibility for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, said: “I stand by everything I have said. This was clearly not a crime of passion. “It was not a crime of opportunity where someone felt they should steal her handbag and then found they had to shoot her. “This was a well planned and orchestrated hit. “This is not something you plan easily. It is organised crime with an international player that has a crime organisation with presence in T&T.”
On May 4, Seetahal was shot dead just outside the Woodbrook Youth Facility on Hamilton Holder Street as she was on her way to her apartment at One Woodbrook Place after leaving the Ma Pau casino on Ariapita Avenue, Port-of-Spain. Residents reported hearing a volley of gunshots followed by screeching tyres. By the time they contacted police and ran outside to check, they found Seetahal slumped over the steering wheel of her light blue Volkswagen Touareg. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams has publicly said the police knew how and why Seetahal was killed but thus far, 53 days after her killing, no one has been charged with her murder. Yesterday, Brownfield said Seetahal’s murder could not be seen as “just another statistic,” explaining that Seetahal had partnered with the US government on several issues, had been the beneficiary of a Fulbright scholarship from the US government, and was, in his words, “a star, a woman of tremendous courage.”
Reached in England last night National Security Minister Gary Griffith said he preferred not to comment.
Drug, crime problem gowing
Pointing out that there was a correlation between the increase of drugs flowing through the region and the crime and violence on the regional streets, including those of T&T, US Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield said the increased use of the Caribbean as a trans-shipment point for drugs had led to the increase in murders. He predicted that the level of violence was likely to get worse over the next few years, warning that even arms of the State can be challenged.
He added: “Drug traffickers have to have the firepower to defend their turf. They eventually have to be prepared to take on institutions of the State, whether that is the police, border guards, customs or the Judiciary.” Brownfield said drug cartels were well organised and targeted countries where there were weaknesses, which could range from poorly paid public officials to unprotected borders.
He repeated his statement, reported in the T&T Guardian last month, that the US estimated the quantum of drugs being trans-shipped through the Caribbean to the US had increased, saying it had risen between 2011 and 2013 by over 300 per cent. He listed three major routes in the Caribbean. The first, he said, was through Jamaica and then onto the United States, the second through the Dominican Republic/Haiti and the third through the eastern Caribbean.
Brownfield said the US government was partnering with Caricom governments to help deal with the crime challenge, including the challenge of guns coming into the region from the US.
He said the reality was that the US had its own laws relating to gun control but had put in place a system where law enforcement could trace a gun in real time, determine if it was in the country illegally and if the ballistics showed it had been used in any other crime. The ambassador admitted that was not enough but said the US was operating in a situation where its legal system was different from those in the region.
On the issue of extra-judicial killings, he said if there was evidence that the police service was involved in such killing in any country, by law, the US would have to discontinue co-operation with the organisation. He explained that was currently the situation with the St Lucian police and that was why co-operation with that country had been suspended. Brownfield said that was unfortunate because the move not only hurt St Lucia but the region as a whole.
Allegations of extra-judicial killings have been made against the T&T Police Service by members of the public after the recent spate of police shootings. So far this year, 29 people have been killed by the police in T&T.
The Guardian wrote:Seetahal had partnered with the US government on several issues, had been the beneficiary of a Fulbright scholarship from the US government, and was, in his words, “a star, a woman of tremendous courage.”
TriniAutoMart wrote:Weren't some names called in the earlies?
SMc wrote:Who is that? Honest question
SMc wrote:Who is that? Honest question
Valentines escourts wrote:SMc wrote:Who is that? Honest question
Ppl you dont want to have affiliations with
RASC wrote:Interesting if it is in fact them...
I wonder what Kamala would say.
T&T link in underwater drug trade
Expert on discovery of Guyana drug sub…
Charles Kong Soo
Published:
Sunday, August 31, 2014
A narco sub at sea.
The recent discovery of a cocaine-smuggling submarine in Guyana opens up the possibility that T&T, already a major transhipment for narcotics, could also be supplying bunkered diesel fuel for the illicit underwater operation. That is the view of University of the West Indies (UWI) sociology lecturer Daurius Figueira, author of Cocaine Trafficking in The Caribbean & West Africa in the Era of The Mexican Cartels.
“The fact that they were building a self-propelled semi-submersible (SPSS) in Guyana means there are other manufacturing points in the Caribbean and now we have fleets of SPSSes. Before they used to be running in the Pacific between South America and Central America. Now its on both sides, the Caribbean and the Atlantic ocean,” he told the Sunday Guardian.
“This indicates that the Caribbean island chain is now in the big time for cocaine smuggling and T&T has an important role to play—smuggling fuel to these vessels because Guyana has no fuel source. All the fuel in Guyana has to come from either Venezuela or Trinidad.”
Figueira said drug submarines could not operate in the Caribbean without fuel, relay stations or ports and it was obvious from the one discovered in Guyana that product was being moved via SPSSes from the Caribbean to South America and up the Caribbean island chain to the United States.
He said a submarine the size of the one found in Guyana could transport three tonnes of cocaine with ease and close to five tonnes tightly packed. He said the Guyanese vessel was not designed for deep water operations or long hauls as it was a semi-submersible and not capable of diving fully under water like a dedicated submarine.
The Ministry of National Security, in a release on drug submarines sent to the Sunday Guardian, said they were known to be used particularly by Colombian drug cartels to export cocaine from Colombia to Mexico. The drugs are often then transported overland to the United States.
Griffith: OPVs useless against drug subs
National Security Minister Gary Griffith said T&T had the capability to track and intercept drug submarines in its territorial waters. However, he said, he could not divulge the technology available to local security forces. Griffith added that offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) would not have been able to deal with incursions by drug submarines.
“It emphasises my point about the illogical comments made by a few that if we had three defective OPVs it would stop the flow of illegal drugs and weapons. One hundred OPVs would be useless. The critical operational policies required are not defective 90-metre vessels in deep waters but exactly what we have done, reigniting the security co-operation agreement with Venezuela and Colombia,” he said.
“There is now better sharing [of] information being turned to intelligence upon which heavier deterrents are implemented and national security resources can be streamlined in the appropriate position.”
http://50tt.guardian.co.tt/crime-and-co ... drug-trade
UML wrote:T&T link in underwater drug trade
Expert on discovery of Guyana drug sub…
Charles Kong Soo
Published:
Sunday, August 31, 2014
A narco sub at sea.
The recent discovery of a cocaine-smuggling submarine in Guyana opens up the possibility that T&T, already a major transhipment for narcotics, could also be supplying bunkered diesel fuel for the illicit underwater operation. That is the view of University of the West Indies (UWI) sociology lecturer Daurius Figueira, author of Cocaine Trafficking in The Caribbean & West Africa in the Era of The Mexican Cartels.
“The fact that they were building a self-propelled semi-submersible (SPSS) in Guyana means there are other manufacturing points in the Caribbean and now we have fleets of SPSSes. Before they used to be running in the Pacific between South America and Central America. Now its on both sides, the Caribbean and the Atlantic ocean,” he told the Sunday Guardian.
“This indicates that the Caribbean island chain is now in the big time for cocaine smuggling and T&T has an important role to play—smuggling fuel to these vessels because Guyana has no fuel source. All the fuel in Guyana has to come from either Venezuela or Trinidad.”
Figueira said drug submarines could not operate in the Caribbean without fuel, relay stations or ports and it was obvious from the one discovered in Guyana that product was being moved via SPSSes from the Caribbean to South America and up the Caribbean island chain to the United States.
He said a submarine the size of the one found in Guyana could transport three tonnes of cocaine with ease and close to five tonnes tightly packed. He said the Guyanese vessel was not designed for deep water operations or long hauls as it was a semi-submersible and not capable of diving fully under water like a dedicated submarine.
The Ministry of National Security, in a release on drug submarines sent to the Sunday Guardian, said they were known to be used particularly by Colombian drug cartels to export cocaine from Colombia to Mexico. The drugs are often then transported overland to the United States.
Griffith: OPVs useless against drug subs
National Security Minister Gary Griffith said T&T had the capability to track and intercept drug submarines in its territorial waters. However, he said, he could not divulge the technology available to local security forces. Griffith added that offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) would not have been able to deal with incursions by drug submarines.
“It emphasises my point about the illogical comments made by a few that if we had three defective OPVs it would stop the flow of illegal drugs and weapons. One hundred OPVs would be useless. The critical operational policies required are not defective 90-metre vessels in deep waters but exactly what we have done, reigniting the security co-operation agreement with Venezuela and Colombia,” he said.
“There is now better sharing [of] information being turned to intelligence upon which heavier deterrents are implemented and national security resources can be streamlined in the appropriate position.”
http://50tt.guardian.co.tt/crime-and-co ... drug-trade
hope it wasnt posted already
Habit7 wrote:"The country is not at war out in the seas; the country is at war on the ground..."
MP SC Kamla Persad-Bissessar
Griffith: OPVs useless against drug subs
National Security Minister Gary Griffith said T&T had the capability to track and intercept drug submarines in its territorial waters. However, he said, he could not divulge the technology available to local security forces. Griffith added that offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) would not have been able to deal with incursions by drug submarines.
“It emphasises my point about the illogical comments made by a few that if we had three defective OPVs it would stop the flow of illegal drugs and weapons. One hundred OPVs would be useless. The critical operational policies required are not defective 90-metre vessels in deep waters but exactly what we have done, reigniting the security co-operation agreement with Venezuela and Colombia,” he said.
“There is now better sharing [of] information being turned to intelligence upon which heavier deterrents are implemented and national security resources can be streamlined in the appropriate position.”
Habit7 wrote:I don't know how Mr. Griffith statement does nothing else but contradicts the PM's earlier statement.
And are the defective OPVs Mr. Griffith referring to the ones being used by the 2nd largest navy in the Americas?
UML wrote:Habit7 wrote:"The country is not at war out in the seas; the country is at war on the ground..."
MP SC Kamla Persad-BissessarGriffith: OPVs useless against drug subs
National Security Minister Gary Griffith said T&T had the capability to track and intercept drug submarines in its territorial waters. However, he said, he could not divulge the technology available to local security forces. Griffith added that offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) would not have been able to deal with incursions by drug submarines.
“It emphasises my point about the illogical comments made by a few that if we had three defective OPVs it would stop the flow of illegal drugs and weapons. One hundred OPVs would be useless. The critical operational policies required are not defective 90-metre vessels in deep waters but exactly what we have done, reigniting the security co-operation agreement with Venezuela and Colombia,” he said.
“There is now better sharing [of] information being turned to intelligence upon which heavier deterrents are implemented and national security resources can be streamlined in the appropriate position.”
Habit7 wrote:"The country is not at war out in the seas; the country is at war on the ground..."
MP SC Kamla Persad-Bissessar
T&T was offered what Brazil took, but we rejected itUML wrote:Habit7 wrote:I don't know how Mr. Griffith statement does nothing else but contradicts the PM's earlier statement.
And are the defective OPVs Mr. Griffith referring to the ones being used by the 2nd largest navy in the Americas?
allyuh really suffering from an OPV and Runoff Tabanca oui!
maybe..just maybe...adjustments were made to meet the requirements or the design of the opvs were better suited for this country? you ever think?
The MOD (UK Ministry of Defence) had urged T&T to consider accepting the degraded boat with a hope of rectification (possibly one year).
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/OPV ... 31481.html
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