Trinidad gov’t says blindsided over background of Nicki Minaj’s husband

(Trinidad Guardian) Gov­ern­ment doesn’t yet have a sys­tem which would have al­lowed im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials to ac­quire visa in­for­ma­tion from the Unit­ed States which would have in­di­cat­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go-born US-based rap­per Nic­ki Mi­naj’s hus­band was an al­leged sex of­fend­er in his na­tive coun­try.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi in­di­cat­ed this at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain when asked about the mat­ter.

The queries fol­lowed re­ports by US me­dia, in­clud­ing TMZ, that Mi­naj’s hus­band, Ken­neth Pet­ty, was charged Wednes­day with al­leged­ly fail­ing to reg­is­ter as a sex of­fend­er in Cal­i­for­nia. E! News re­port­ed that the US At­tor­ney’s Of­fice of Los An­ge­les con­firmed Pet­ty sur­ren­dered to fed­er­al au­thor­i­ties Wednes­day and was tak­en in­to cus­tody. He plead­ed not guilty and was re­leased on a bond. Pet­ty’’s de­nied the al­le­ga­tions.

US me­dia claimed that Pet­ty, who mar­ried Mi­naj last year, served al­most four years in prison for at­tempt­ed rape in New York in 1995 and 10 months for first-de­gree manslaugh­ter in 2006. As a re­sult of the rape charge, he was re­quired to reg­is­ter as a sex of­fend­er in every state he sub­se­quent­ly moves to, in­clud­ing Cal­i­for­nia where they now re­side. He now faces up to 10 years in prison on the cur­rent charge. Since his ar­rest, Pet­ty has had to wear an an­kle mon­i­tor and has sur­ren­dered his pass­port.

Pet­ty came un­der fire when he came here with Mi­naj for the re­cent Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties, af­ter he shoved so­ca star Iw­er George when he (George) at­tempt­ed to get Mi­naj to per­form part of his Road March hit col­lab­o­ra­tion with Kees Diefen­thaller, Stage gone Bad, on Tribe’s mu­sic truck in the So­cadrome at the Jean Pierre Com­plex, Mu­cu­rapo.

Mi­naj, whose re­al name is Oni­ka Maraj-Pet­ty, apol­o­gised to Tri­ni mas­quer­aders who re­act­ed to the in­ci­dent on so­cial me­dia, say­ing her hus­band was un­aware of the Tri­ni cul­ture dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son and had been over­ly pro­tec­tive in the sit­u­a­tion.

Ques­tions were raised by the pub­lic about Pet­ty be­ing al­lowed in­to T&T by im­mi­gra­tion due to his crim­i­nal his­to­ry even be­fore the news broke this week about his ar­rest.

Asked about the mat­ter yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi said T&T doesn’t have a visa arrange­ment with the US and so would not have been able to ac­cess such in­for­ma­tion. Cur­rent­ly, he said Gov­ern­ment is work­ing on the re­moval of Cus­toms and Im­mi­gra­tion forms and use of har­monised forms.

“So as we get ad­vanced pas­sen­ger in­for­ma­tion sys­tems com­ing in­to ef­fect, we’ll know who’s a sex of­fend­er or not,” the AG added.

Al-Rawi said he didn’t know the in­for­ma­tion about Pet­ty and Im­mi­gra­tion al­so didn’t know it but said there’s no mech­a­nism to en­force that yet but added. He said T&T has bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions with the US but it wasn’t that easy to get such in­for­ma­tion.

“But we’ll work our way to­wards that. We don’t have an im­me­di­ate per­fect so­lu­tion right now but we’re in a ma­te­ri­al­ly more ad­van­ta­geous po­si­tion than we were be­fore, we’re head­ed in the right di­rec­tion,” Al-Rawi said.

The AG said Gov­ern­ment had want­ed a sex of­fend­ers law, where a con­vict­ed sex of­fend­er’s pass­port could be stamped as such, “so Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers would know au­to­mat­i­cal­ly.” He said Cana­da has it but he said “the in­ter­est groups” didn’t want that for T&T and Gov­ern­ment had to com­ply or the ad­min­is­tra­tion wouldn’t have got­ten the “kind of sup­port we want­ed.”

How­ev­er, Al-Rawi said Gov­ern­ment had op­er­a­tionalised the lo­cal of­fend­ers’ law. He not­ed that in Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day, MPs al­so passed law to broad­en the cat­e­go­ry of sex­u­al of­fences. He al­so re­it­er­at­ed im­prove­ments to in­crease the ef­fec­tive­ness of the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence law – us­ing elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing bracelets – are be­ing draft­ed. It’s pro­posed that cul­prits against whom pro­tec­tion or­ders are is­sued, will be fit­ted with mon­i­tor­ing bracelets and the per­son who sought the or­der will al­so have cor­re­spond­ing bracelets which will alert them if the cul­prit breach­es the or­der. Amend­ments will be laid in Par­lia­ment in a week.