Situation in PoS under control

Police reports state that at 2.30 p.m yesterday, an unknown device exploded in a garbage bin outside Maraj Jewellers Store at the corner of Frederick and Queen Streets. Within minutes of the explosion, businesses within a two block radius were shut down. Heavily-armed police officers and soldiers were immediately on the scene to direct people out of the area and cordon it off.

Among the first on the scene around 3 p m were Port-of-Spain Mayor Murchison Brown and Tourism Minister Howard Chin Lee’s whose offices were located in close proximity to the scene. Chin Lee was briefed by senior police officers on the scene and departed shortly thereafter, declining to speak to reporters. Joseph arrived on the scene around 3.55 pm where he was briefed by Deputy Police Commissioner Glen Roach and other senior officers on site.

Speaking afterwards with reporters, Joseph said: "Let me just give the assurance to our population that the law enforcement agencies are on top of the matter. We are going to do everything to determine precisely what’s the cause and who’s responsible. So there is no need to panic at this point in time."

Joseph said it was ironic that he was chairing the start of a two-day counter-terrorism conference being held by the Inter-American Committee against Terrorism (CICTE) in Tobago with Caricom leaders when he received word of yesterday’s explosion in Port-of-Spain. "I just left when Argentina made a presentation sharing its experience with respect to two bombings in 1992 and 1994," he added.

The minister also observed that another irony of yesterday’s events was the fact that the Anti-Terrorism Bill was now before a special select committee of the Senate where certain specifics were currently being ironed out. Joseph said it was too early to say who or what were responsible for yesterday’s bomb blast in Port-of-Spain (since investigations were ongoing and no one has been apprehended as yet) or whether it was connected to last week’s London bombings (which killed 50 persons and injured hundreds more) but he was thankful that "so far that there are no fatalities." Joseph added that he would be heading to Whitehall immediately afterwards to brief Prime Minister Patrick Manning about what he had learned from the law enforcement officers on site.

The minister declined to say whether or not either Cabinet or the National Security Council (both of which are chaired by Manning) would meet in emergency session in light of yesterday’s events. Joseph said all the heads of the country’s intelligence services were currently at the CICTE conference in Tobago, but were aware of what was happening.

Brown also declined to speculate about the cause of yesterday’s explosion and said he will await advice from the security forces about when the city could return to some degree of normalcy. He praised the security forces for the way they handled yesterday’s events which showed that "we are not immune at all from any sort of attack." "As individuals and groups, we need to be very alert and to take all the necessary precautions," Brown said. The Mayor added that Port-of- Spain has effective security plans in place to deal with any contingency.