(Trinidad Guardian) Self-proclaimed spy, pastor Ian Brown, is again in police custody, after he and four other affiliates of the Strategic Services Agency, including former director Roger Best, were detained by police during a 24-hour exercise between Wednesday afternoon and yesterday.
Brown and Best, who has been on administrative leave since March 2, are assisting police with a series of investigations, which include murder and illegally transferring guns.
Police sources told Guardian Media yesterday that the five were being kept separately at different police stations and have been assisting police in the company of their attorneys.
Brown, a former special reserve police officer, was fired on March 19. He was appointed a police officer by former police commissioner Gary Griffith in 2011 and seconded to the SSA at the request of Best.
He is reportedly Best’s “prophetic adviser” and earned a consulting fee from the agency of about $25,000 per month.
Brown not only claimed to be a spy but was said to be Israeli and German-trained. His philosophy of rebuilding a governmental structure, including using people of faith with a military mindset, saw many members of his church becoming members of the SSA, including its then deputy director of intelligence Joanne Daniel.
Brown’s Malabar home and churches—Jerusalem Bride in Malabar and the Eden Restored Church in Cumuto—were searched in March and police-issued equipment was seized.
On March 2, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley announced, through the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), that the National Security Council had recommended Best be replaced immediately.
Best was sent on administrative leave and T&T’s ambassador to the United States, Anthony Phillips-Spencer, was recalled and appointed acting director of the agency. Spencer was also appointed to conduct an internal audit of the SSA.
To date, 12 people once assigned to the SSA have been fired as the audit continues.
Apart from the alleged illegal transferring of state-issued arms and ammunition, police are also investigating murders supposedly linked to SSA employees.
Those murders include that of Bryan Felix, 40, and landowner Aleem Khan, 50, who were found in a forested part of Cumuto in 2019, and last year’s murder of Andy Daniel, 53. Daniel was the husband of now-sacked SSA deputy director Joanne Daniel. The killing of alleged gangster Anthon “Bombay” Boney in September 2021 is also being probed in connection with possible links to the SSA.
For months before Daniel’s death, intelligence officials tried to raise concerns to Government officials to talk about how the SSA was being run by Best—including the confluence of church members at the top of the agency who were being heavily influenced by Pastor Brown, the challenges being faced with Best given his religious proclivities (he is an elder at Brown’s church), and operations taking place that were beyond the remit of the SSA, all funded by taxpayers’ dollars.
International assistance was sought by the Government to investigate allegations of misconduct at the SSA.
Following the shake-up, Rowley said the issue was of grave concern, as there may have been state resources used in criminal conduct.
Rowley said then, “As I speak to you now, the problem has multiplied because, for the last two weeks, we have been dealing with the State’s contribution to that problem, where the state authority in a position of trust has surreptitiously broken down and the calypso that we listen to, Who’s Going to Guard the Guards, became the most pertinent question in Trinidad and Tobago because the state agencies had become one with the criminal agencies.”