This news article is a production distributed through Caribbean News Service. It is made freely available to your media and we encourage publishing and redistribution, giving credit to Caribbean News Service (CNS).
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, May 26 2016 – The Trinidad and Tobago government Wednesday sought to re-assure citizens that it was taking the threat to bomb shopping malls here seriously and warned that it would use every available resource to protect the state and its citizens.
Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley told a news conference at the end of the weekly Cabinet meeting that his administration is treating the alleged threat “seriously” and that while it had little information regarding the credibility of the source, his government was not prepared to take chances.
“We have some capacity but I don’t know that capacity has been able to deliver to us the source. What we do know it has not been determined that it is something that has an origin that we can identify as being realistic and we also know that there are elements, persons and entities, whose interest will be served if Trinidad and Tobago is destabilised in this kind of way.
“We treat all threats seriously and we take very careful note of those who will destabilise us, What we do know is that that kind of information, real or otherwise, has the potential to be a destabilising influence,” he told reporters.
On Tuesday, National Security Minister retired Major General Edmund Dillon urged residents to remain calm as police continued their investigations into the authenticity of two recordings posted on the social website, warning of a plot to bomb several shopping malls in the country.
In a statement, Dillon said that he is telling citizens “not be guided by rumours and remain calm and vigilant and report any suspicious activity”.
He has given an assurance that this country’s intelligence agencies “are working to authenticate the origin of such threats and findings will be generated in a timely and accurate manner”.
In the first recording directed to a What’s App group, the man uses the word “batch” which is commonly used by soldiers, and makes reference of information he says came out of the camp he is in.
He goes on to refer to the camp as being close to where the Special Anti-Crime Unit of T&T (SUATT) operated and that the word reaching the camp is that ISIS is planning to detonate bombs in the malls sometime between Thursday and Sunday
The person is informing relatives to stay away from the malls.
Police say they are in possession of the recordings and are seeking to determine whether they are authentic or a hoax.
Prime Minister Rowley told reporters that one of his reasons for visiting the United States and the United Kingdom earlier this month was to ensure that Trinidad and Tobago maintained “that line of communication and the understanding of the assistance that we require and the cooperation that we engage in between our major partners and national security”.
He said that the assistance is “very forthcoming from the major countries that we interact with.
“We are very well served by their involvement with us with respect to training our security personnel, creating the institutional arrangements and ensure that we get the benefit of what they do and that we improve our security base on what they can help us with,” he added.
