At around 4 am yesterday, officers led by ASP Ajith Persad and including Acting Inspector Gokool of the Inter Agency Task Force along with Sgt Austin, Cpl Charles Budree, PC Keron Lewis and others went to Laventille.

The exercise was co-ordinated by Snr Supt Radcliffe Boxhill.

The officers went into a house at Seales Avenue where they found five women, between the ages of 20 and 32 and five men, all in their late 20s watching television in the house.

Officers carried out a search of the house and found an AR 15 rifle, two AR magazines, a 9 mm pistol, 43 rounds of 5.56 ammunition and 80 packets of marijuana.

Police believe the ten are members of a gang who were using the AR 15 and other weapons to carry out armed robberies and also operate as hired guns.

The same team of officers then went to Pump Trace, where they attempted to detain a 24-year-old man wanted for several robberies.

While at the house the officers were accosted by a 22-year-old woman who attempted to prevent his arrest. Both were arrested.

Officers also executed search warrant at a house at Picton Road and arrested two men and seized a 9 mm magazine and three grams of marijuana Six others were held for shooting offences and are expected to be placed on ID parades over the weekend before appearing in the Port-of-Spain Magistrates Courts on Monday.

The incident occurred at Papourie Road, Barrackpore .

One of the boys, who is 16 years old, was also charged by the police for possession of marijuana and a knife. They appeared before Senior Magistrate Gail Gonzales .

The police prosecutor told the court it was about 2.30 pm when Seujattan had parked his car near the Barrackpore East Secondary School. He was approached by the students who asked him for a ride to Princes Town. When they saw three female students had entered the vehicle, they confronted Seujattan and assaulted him .

A police officer on mobile patrol saw the accused students around Seujattan’s vehicle. He asked Seujattan what had happened and he said, “These boys just beat me up and buss meh head.” He sought medical attention at the Princes Town District Medical Health Facility .

Attorney Frank Gittens represented the students and told Gonzales that the boys may have gotten annoyed over the fact that they saw their female schoolmates get into Seujattan’s taxi, they having just minutes before asked him if he was taking passengers in his vehicle to Princes Town .

Gonzales said she would like a probation officer’s report on the students before deciding on what sentence to impose. She placed each on bail in the sum of $20,000 with their respective parents as surety. They were ordered to reappear on April 25 .

A third man escaped .

According to reports at about 12.30 pm, police were at the corner of Chrissie Trace and Savannah Road, Enterprise when they stopped a white Tiida car with three occupants .

One of the suspects fled but police detained a 17-year-old man and a 19-year-old man said to be members of the Unruly ISIS gang .

Officers searched the vehicle and discovered the guns, one of which was equipped with a laser, a scope and an extended clip .

The suspects were taken to the Chaguanas Police Station where they were questioned about several gun-related incidents. Seven other members of the gang were also arrested last week after they were allegedly found to be in possession of ammunition and marijuana .

The incident occurred nine years ago at Bois Bourg in which 60-year-old Stephen Singh is on trial before Justice Malcolm Holdip and a jury of nine members for shooting Wayne Vesprey inside the parlour on November, 24, 2008.

Vesprey gave evidence on Wednesday that he was then a tug boat captain and had gone to the parlour to buy a phone card when an argument erupted between Singh and himself.

The State is contending that Singh, also known as “Tufie”, shot Vesprey in the forehead with an air gun.

Singh was charged with wounding with intent.

Yesterday, State Attorney Stacy Laloo- Chong, who together with attorney Krishna Jaglal, is prosecuting the case, called Police Constable Roger Banga to the witness box to give evidence.

He said he and Police Constable Singh met Vesprey who was bleeding.

“He was blacking out and his head was banned up,” Banga said.

Attorney Kevin Ratiram who is representing Singh, cross-examined Banga and asked him if he had enquired from anyone nearby if they had heard or seen anything relating to the incident.

Banga testified that he and PC Singh had to attend to Vesprey and ensure that he was taken to the hospital and that was the reason why they did not seek to get interviews from anyone.

On Wednesday the air gun was admitted and tendered into evidence. Yesterday, Ratiram put to Banga that when the incident occurred, Singh had told him (Banga) that Vesprey pulled the gate to the family’s home and made a grab at Singh’s wife.

But Banga denied that Singh said so.

The trial continues on Monday at 10 am when PC Singh will be the next State witness

In a release sent to the media, Griffith said there was a specific reason that Government wanted to order a number of Armoured Personnel Carriers while he was in the ministry in 2004.

“Assault rifles with 5.56 ammunition, apart from rapid fire, have the capability, when fired, to at times penetrate vehicles,” Griffith said.

“It was in anticipation of such an expected response whereby our law enforcement officials may be confronted by criminal elements with such fire-power. But what was done instead was a witch hunt to dismantle critical assets and policies that would be instrumental to peg back criminal elements, inclusive of assets to protect our officers in the line of

“Anti-gang legislation will come to the table as soon as next week,” he told a news conference at the Ministry of National Security’s headquarters, Temple Court, Port-of-Spain.

The news conference, attended by National Security Minister Edmund Dillon and Acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams, addressed the recent spate of murders which have plagued Enterprise, central Trinidad, and more recently, Le Platte Village, Maraval and Bagatelle, Diego Martin.

Le Platte and Bagatelle recorded five killings within the last 36 hours.

The briefing preceded a visit by Dillon, Williams and Chief of Defence Staff Rodney Smart to the troubled Enterprise community.

Noting the Opposition’s lack of support for the anti-gang bill, on its last appearance in the Parliament – as well as other key pieces of anti-crime legislation – Al-Rawi urged them to support the legislation as the Government moves to comprehensively tackle gang activity, which is believed to have fuelled the murders in the districts.

“We are going to be laying in the Parliament the anti-gang bill in its exact form as it was expired,” he said. “We are also going to seek bail amendments that are required to facilitate the holding of persons for up to 120 days.

We are going to ask the Opposition to reverse their position on not supporting this because it is a matter of fact that several persons who have been murdered recently – one in side of the yard of a police station, one allegedly in the last few days – were persons who were released out from custody in circumstances where they could not be held for extended periods because of the collapse of the bail amendments and anti- gang legislation.

“These will be two additional pieces of work which will run alongside the very serious amendments that are going right now on our criminal justice system because we are convinced that until there is a consequence, in terms of a criminal sanction from a court, that you cannot really take management of crime seriously.” Al-Rawi lamented the killings in Le Platte.

“Last night, the country witnessed in Le Platte, innocent bystanders caught in what appears to be machine gunfire where the allegation is that a well-known criminal was targeted and executed and that so indiscriminate was the action that it didn’t matter to anyone who was carrying out that crime that innocent bystanders would be caught,” he said.

“As a Government, we warned and we have said in the Parliament that it only takes one person with a machine gun to change your murder statistics in a horrible way overnight.” The AG said there was an “obvious correlation between the amount of interdiction that you do with drugs and the effect it is going to have on those who are deprived of the profit of their trade.” “Somebody in Trinidad and Tobago lost $837 million worth of the product when 4.3 tonnes of cocaine was interdicted. Somebody in T&T lost money when marijuana was interdicted,” he said.

Al-Rawi said a social media war was taking place between alleged Unuly Isis members and Rasta City.

“The media is hot with videos of persons purporting to be gang members, labelled, packaged with accompanying music and yet when we went to the Parliament to carry on the extension of the anti-gang legislation, we were told by the Opposition that Trinidad and Tobago does not really need this because we have no empirical proof that this is required,” he said.

“We have heard some people describe legislative proposals as legislative babble, as being short-sighted but no one can point out with any sincerity to what aspect of the legislation is offensive.

No one can point out with any sincerity that there will be an acceleration in the criminal justice system by the removal of preliminary inquiries, by the potential to elect a judge only trial by the sue of plea bargaining.” Al-Rawi said the Criminal Proceedings Rules will “come alive” on April 18

“There was a listing communicated to the Government on March 31 2017. That transmission came to us from the United States Embassy and it acknowledged that the US has listed Shane Dominic Crawford.

“He was designated as person believed to be in Syria serving as an English-Language propagandist for the group working with ISIS,” Al-Rawi said during a news conference at the Ministry of National Security’s head office in Port-of- Spain.

He confirmed that Government has also listed Crawford, under Section 22 of the Anti- Terrorism Act.

The consequence of that listing, Al-Rawi said, was that Crawford is the 341st individual or entity listed in accordance with Section 22B and the fifth designation by TT in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001). “Having gone from zero in 2015, we are now at 341 listings including five nationals of TT,” he said.

“We have more listings which would be sent to the court very shortly because we worked our way from the outside in, first being the UN designations, then moving to persons who had linkages to them.” The Order against Crawford, also known as Abu Sa’d al-Trinidadi and “Asadullah”, came after several months of intelligence sharing and investigative co-operation between TT and the United States and United Kingdom.

“Today’s success is due in large part to the joint efforts of, the Ministry of National Security (Strategic Services Agency and Immigration Division), the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (Financial Investigations Branch and Special Branch), the Financial Intelligence Unit and the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs (Registrar General’s Department, Central Authority and Anti-Terrorism Desk),” the statement from the Office of the AG said.

The Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs said it continues to make significant progress in implementing the provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act, which remained largely un-utilised until the first ever Order under Section 22B was obtained from the High Court on December 3, 2015.

“Such action against Crawford however represents a new threshold in TT’s fight against terrorism and the spread of violent extremism ideologies,” the ministry said. It is not known if Crawford is alive.

Newsday understands that the incident occurred at about 5.30 pm yesterday.

From such a distance, a high-powered sniper rifle equipped with scope would have had to be used.

It is not known if the victim was used as a random target for practice or was indeed the gunman’s intended target.

On being shot, a report was made to police and the man was rushed to the nearby Port-of-Spain General Hospital where he was treated.

Police said they are continuing to try and rid the Division of illegal firearms and ammunition.

They said that a pre-dawn raid in Laventille yesterday resulted in the seizure of a high-powered AR 15 assault rifle.

According to a release by police yesterday, drivers were reminded that fatalities could be prevented if they and other road users exercise more care and restraint.

In the first incident, Stephan Mahadeo, 25, from Montrose in Chaguanas was driving a black Subaru car along the north-bound lane of the Uriah Butler Highway near the Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries, at about 4 am yesterday.

Police said he lost control of th vehicle which crashed into a tree on the left side of the highway.

The impact was so great that the car split in two. One half of the car landed in a small ravine near the tree, and the other half on the bank. Police and emergency services were called to the scene, but it was too late for Mahadeo. A District Medical Officer pronounced him dead on the scene.

Then, just before 10 am yesterday, a Maracas, St Joseph biker lost his life after crashing into a van on the Eastern Main Road.

According to reports, Andre Chandler Rivers, 33, was riding his motorcycle west along the Eastern Main Road when he was struck by a Mitsubishi pick-up truck, which was driven by a 48-year-old man of Point Cumana. Rivers was taken to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, where he died. Last year, the number of fatal accidents for the corresponding period stood at 40.

Indera Sagewan-Alli says BP may be signalling that a revision of the fiscal regime which governs the local energy sector is needed.

The Office of the Prime Minister, in a release on Thursday, stated that BP would invest US$5 billion in this country over the next five years. The release also stated that the final agreement between the National Gas Company and BP for Angelin gas field, which is 40 kilometres offshore Trinidad and Tobago’s east coast, “will be executed shortly and that this project will be kept on schedule.” In a statement yesterday, Energy Chamber chief executive officer Dr. Thackwray Driver said the announcement that BPTT and NGC are close to a final agreement on a new gas supply contract post-2019 is “very positive news for the gas industry in Trinidad and Tobago.” “The finalisation of this agreement was needed before BPTT would proceed with their next major field development project, Angelin, and also opens the way for further investments. Given the urgent need for new investment in upstream gas production, this is therefore very welcome news for Trinidad & Tobago,” Driver stated.

In full agreement was newly elected president of the Chaguanas Chamber of Industry and Commerce (CCIC) Vishnu Charran who, in an interview, said the company was seeing “growth and potential in our economy.” “They are seeing stability despite all the negative reports we see in the papers,” Charran said.

“They see stability in government and the ease of doing business with the government so it is a good sign for the economy.” However Sagewan-Alli recalled that BP had previously said the company was “prepared to make that level of investment in Trinidad and Tobago provided the economic climate was conducive to that kind of investment.” “And what he was alluding very clearly to was the issue of the fiscal regime within which BP operates and so he was sending a very clear message that unless the government is prepared to make that environment a lot more attractive that it currently is, the current economic climate in the energy environment, it is subject to that.

“Let us not forget that BP, over the last two years, has downsized, laid off quite a few hundred workers in Trinidad in its effort at rationalisation which has been its response to what is happening in the global energy market,” she said. Meanwhile, Driver, who recently attended an energy conference in Guyana, said there were “numerous” business opportunities available in the fledgling Guyanese oil industry.

“The continued exploration success of Exxon and their partners in Guyana highlights the potential that exists for the development of the oil industry in our Caribbean neighbour.”