EFFECTIVE January 1, 2004, nationals of Trinidad and Tobago arriving in the United States with visas will be finger- printed, their photographs taken, their travel documents scanned, and their their identification checked against a terrorist watch list. The new system was announced in Washington yesterday by Asa Hutchinson, Homeland Security Department’s Under-Secretary, and will apply to people from all over the world as part of US measures to deal with terorrism. The new rules will place a further burden on the travelling public as already passengers from this country travelling to the United States following the September 11 attacks have been subjected to longer check-in times as Piarco where their luggage is searched before boarding aircraft.

Security guards at Piarco Airport search the luggage of passengers inside the terminal building before they are properly cleared, while further checks are made before the luggage is loaded onto the aircraft. There are also spot checks of shoes at Piarco, following the incident involving English shoe-bomber Robert Reid who attempted to blow up at American Airlines flight which was en route to Miami from Paris. Trinidadian basketballer Kwame James, who was returning home for Christmas 2001, assisted in subduing Reid who was later jailed for life for his crime. The United States Government has decided to implement these stringent measures in an effort to track down suspected terrorists arriving in the US. The US Congress has agreed to spend US $380 million to put this new system in place.

Nationals of TT will be subjected to this new system on arrival at Miami International Airport, JFK International Airport, New York, Washington DC and Boston. Hutchinson said yesterday that such a tracking system could have stopped two of the September 11 hijackers. The new system is called the US Visitor and Immigration Status Indication Technology. The system, which goes into effect January 1, will check the comings and goings of foreign travellers who arrive in the US carrying visas. Travellers with visas made up about 60 percent, or 23 million of foreign visitors to the United States last year. Hutchinson said such a system could have caught hijackers Mohammed Atta, who had overstayed his visa on a previous occasion, and Hani Hanjour, when he failed to show up at school as required by his student visa.

“Border security can no longer be just a coastline, or a line on the ground between two nations. It’s also a line of information in a computer, telling us who is in this country, for how long and for what reason,” Hutchinson said. Under the system, a visa carrier will be required to provide immigrant and citizenship status, nationality, country of residence and an address where the visitor will be staying in the United States. “In 99.9 percent of the cases, the visitor will simply be wished a good day or sent on their way,” Hutchinson said in a speech at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. “But with that small percentage of hits, our country will be made much safer and our immigration system will be given a foundation of integrity that has been lacking for too long.” When the visitor leaves, Hutchinson said, the system will verify the traveller’s departure and identification. All the hijackers travelled to the United States on visas; two were in the country illegally at the time of the attacks.  

PASTOR Earl Phillip of the Lighhouse Ministries, was contacted by phone on Friday last and threatened by the kidnappers of 21-year-old Kerri Greaves, daughter of Newsday’s senior reporter, Debra Ravello-Greaves. The pastor’s daughter, Vanessa, 27, was in company with Kerri when both women were held in Maraval last Wednesday night. Vanessa was freed hours after but Kerri has not been seen or heard of since. Phillip, 57, said yesterday he reported the matter to the police and informed them that he would not be intimidated or frightened by such people. “I told the police that if the kidnappers come close to my home, they (police) would have to come in ambulances for the kidnappers’ bodies to take them back to the morgue,” he said.

Phillip, Pastor of the Lighthouse Ministries, Duke Street, Port-of-Spain, said when the kidnappers called his home, they told him that it appears that Kerri’s relatives were not going to pay any money and they asked what he (Phillip) could do about the situation. “I told them ‘not a flipping thing’,” Phillip said.  He added that he told the kidnappers that they were bandits and crooks, who were just out to fleece people out of their money without working hard. The pastor said the kidnappers also threatened his life, saying they know where he lives and that they would come for him. “I told them if it was my children, I also would not have paid any money,” he said.

At the time of the kidnapping, Kerri had just returned from visiting her boyfriend, Qwesi Toussaint, who lives at Riversdale Road, Maraval, when a black B13 Nissan Sentra vehicle pulled alongide and snatched the two women, who are members of the pastor’s church. Phillip said he was saddened about Kerri’s kidnapping. He said Kerri has given her life to God, in an effort to have a bright future. “Those bandits and crooks are holding her against her will to excise money from her parents,” he said, later pleading with the young woman’s relatives not to heed the kidnappers’ request whatsoever.

Saying that the Government of the day is “too light” on kidnapping, Phillip said it is time for the law to be amended since kidnapping is a serious offence, one that deserves a life imprisonment. He called on the kidnappers to release Kerri, a business student. Police sources, meanwhile, said yesterday that members of the Anti Kidnapping Squad (AKS) are working along certain lines in the matter, the 15th kidnapping for ransom for the year. AKS sources said yesterday they made several attempts to find Greaves, using a combined police/army contingent Sunday to search several ares in the Maraval district, but all proved to be futile. Searches yesterday also proved futile. Investigations under AKS chief, Sr Supt Gilbert Reyes are continuing.

UP TO late yesterday worried relatives had not yet heard anything from the kidnappers of six-year-old Marc Prescott who was abducted outside his school six days ago. There has been no word from the kidnappers since last Thursday when they reiterated their demand for $150,000 for the child’s release. Up to late yesterday the boy’s father, Wayne Prescott, an off-shore worker, of Edinburgh Cres-cent, Cocoyea, was sitting by the telephone praying that the kidnappers would contact him. Prescott, a Se-cond Year pupil, of San Fernando Boys’ RC School, at Harris Promen-ade, was last seen leaving his classroom by his teacher last Wed-nesday. The Anti-Kid-napping Squad has no solid leads on the child’s whereabouts and is continuing investigations.

QUESTIONS as to whether the Canadian firm, Scott and Associates Incorporated (SAI) made a presentation to get the job as consultants for the Piarco Airport Development project — now the subject of a Commission of Inquiry — yesterday caused former Housing Minister John Humphrey to become angry and engage in a virtual shouting match with attorney Christopher Hamel-Smith, who represents NIPDEC. At one point Humphrey was also engaged in cross-talk at the same time that Commission chairman Clinton Bernard intervened to call on him to maintain his cool. Humphrey insisted that Hamel-Smith should only ask him questions about things he knows, rather than ask him to interpret information contained in documents.

He even accused the Commission of allowing “witnesses to interpret things they know nothing about.” “Don’t ask me anything about what I don’t know! Ask me what I can answer and not try to implicate me about nothing I know about,” shouted Humphrey. Humphrey yesterday accused former attorney general Ramesh Lawrence-Maharaj of looking for excuses to stop the Piarco project and he dismissed NIPDEC as incompetent and inexperienced with respect to the fast-track method. Hamel-Smith kept repeating questions to Humphrey about whether or not Scott and Associates’ “presentation” was its bid to become consultants in the airport project but Humphrey said Hamel-Smith’s “stubbornness” was only a fraction of his and maintained he should be cross-examined based on the evidence he gave to the  Commission. Chairman Clinton Bernard intervened on several occasions to call for tempers to cool down pointing out to Humphrey that Hamel-Smith was allowed to ask questions on any matter within the Commission’s terms of reference, and assured him that if Hamel-Smith went beyond that, he would be stopped.

Humphrey’s anger came during his admission that when he attended a presentation by Birk Hillman Consultants (BHC) at the Hilton on October 17, 1996, he was of the view that the Cabinet-appointed task force had already selected BHC as the preferred consultants for the project. Humphrey was shown a copy of the task force minutes which showed that the same day that BHC made its presentation in the afternoon, Scott and Associates Inc (SAI) had also given a presentation the same morning. Humphrey was adamant that he could not interpret that to mean that Scott and Associates were making a presentation in a bid to be selected as consultants, but he admitted that it was “possible” that the task force had selected BHC for the Piarco project before Scott’s presentation.

Hamel-Smith posed numerous questions in different ways to have Humphrey confirm that the Scott Associates’ presentation was merely a charade or a rival one over BHC’s, but Humphrey refused to say yes, insisting that it was merely a possibility which he could not confirm because he was not present when Scott Associates made their presentation, but was only there for the BHC presentation. Humphrey would only agree that based on the minutes, Scott Associates was invited to make “a presentation”. He later said that maybe the task force met after the Scott Associates’ presentation and decided to reject their proposal. Told that such a decision would have been made prior to hearing BHC’s proposal, Humphrey further said that could be so, since both companies had proposals “on the table” long before that date.

Earlier Humphrey disputed that Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Works, Justin Paul, was not a member of the task force. A Cabinet minute showed that Cabinet had directed that only one Ministry of Works and Transport representative be on the task force, that is, Sonia Francis. But Humphrey said that wasn’t the case because Paul signed the reports of the task force. He then admitted that based on his experience, it was proper for a Cabinet minister to make a change in a Cabinet decision, if he met in private consultation with the Prime Minister (PM). Asked if it was necessary for the Prime Minister to ratify that change, Humphrey said it depended on the Prime Minister. Humphrey said the PM was the centre of power and he had the power to fire and hire.

Asked if the PM treated Ministers as he wished, Humphrey said the PM’s he worked under the NAR and UNC regime “did not do so”. Humphrey further disclosed yesterday that he was perfectly happy and satisfied to allow BHC to have full powers on the project as approved by Cabinet. He said he was willing to trust them and had full confidence in them to do the project based on the fast-track method. He admitted to having personal misgivings about stopping the project and accused the former Attorney General Ramesh Maharaj of trying to find an excuse to have the project stopped. Humphrey said there was no reason for government to deviate from the way it had organised and structured the project originally and said he believed the cause of the problems later on was because of the interruption of the original approach.

He insisted that NIPDEC had no competence and experience in handling the fast-track method and said it would have been inappropriate for NIPDEC to try to terminate BHC without Cabinet’s approval. Asked about the absence of formal records showing he was appointed Chairman of the Inter-ministerial committee, Humphrey said Prime Minister Basdeo Panday was obviously comfortable with that fact. He said it was a possibility that Panday found it embarrassing for him (Humphrey) to be chairman when Minister of Works and Transport Sadiq Baksh was still in charge of the project as line minister. Humphrey will continue to be questioned this morning when the Inquiry resumes.