Trinidad hitman stopped by special operations team

(Trinidad Guardian) Less than 24 hours af­ter the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) is­sued a con­fi­den­tial re­port in­di­cat­ing that pris­ons of­fi­cers were the tar­get of death threats, their of­fi­cers in­ter­cept­ed a “hit­man” on his way to al­leged­ly kill a first di­vi­sion pris­ons of­fi­cer in East Trinidad on Wednes­day night.

Se­nior sources close to the op­er­a­tion told Guardian Me­dia they got a tip-off that the “hit­man” was on his way to as­sas­si­nate the pris­ons of­fi­cer and in­ter­cept­ed the sus­pect in a stolen ve­hi­cle near Orop­une Gar­dens, Pi­ar­co.

The sus­pect, who is al­so want­ed for a re­cent mur­der in Cen­tral Trinidad, was on his way to pick up an­oth­er ac­com­plice and firearms be­fore head­ing to the prison of­fi­cer’s home.

SORT sources con­firmed that they had is­sued a re­port which point­ed to a plot to kill five pris­ons of­fi­cers on April 1. Fol­low­ing those rev­e­la­tions, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young said in a re­lease that the nec­es­sary ac­tion will be tak­en against those plan­ning such at­tacks.

Young said the threats against pris­ons of­fi­cers were un­ac­cept­able and would be ad­dressed.

“Any­one found threat­en­ing any of­fi­cer in any of the ser­vices un­der na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty will be dealt with by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice as ap­pro­pri­ate. Such ac­tions will not be tol­er­at­ed and any per­pe­tra­tors will face the full brunt of the law,” he said.

The min­is­ter said he had been in touch with Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Dane Clarke and Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith about the SORT re­port. He as­sured that every ef­fort will be made to neu­tral­ize the threat.

Young said: “Threats of vi­o­lence to any prison of­fi­cer or any of­fi­cer at­tached to any of the ser­vices un­der the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty will not be tol­er­at­ed. I have asked that an in­ter-agency ap­proach be de­ployed with this in­ci­dent. This is be­ing treat­ed as a pri­or­i­ty and re­sources are be­ing de­ployed to deal with the threat.”