Category Archives: Crime in T&T

A ‘failed state’? Not my native land

By Raffique Shah
May 25, 2008

Hall of Justice“Breathes there the man with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! If such there breathe, go, mark him well; for him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, boundless his wealth as wish can claim, Despite those titles, power, and pelf, the wretch, concentered all in self”

Sir Walter Scott

Continue reading A ‘failed state’? Not my native land

Monos Island drug trial: Six to serve life in jail

CocaineTWO Trinidadians and four Venezuelans were yesterday sentenced to life imprisonment for trafficking cocaine in what the trial judge said was the “largest amount to ever pass through the courts of Trinidad and Tobago.”

Justice Alice Yorke-Soo Hon, presiding in the Port-of-Spain Third Criminal Court, took her time, more than an hour, as she sent the six guilty people to serve lengthy prison sentences for trafficking 1,749 kilos of cocaine at Monos Island on August 23, 2005.
Full Article : guardian.co.tt

‘Escape of big fish alarming’

JUSTICE Alice Yorke Soo-Hon yesterday questioned why the main house at Passy Bay, Monos Island, was not searched following the August 25, 2005 drug bust which netted $700 million in cocaine.
Continue reading Monos Island drug trial: Six to serve life in jail

Woman 21 charged for raping boy 17

$80,000 bail for woman charged with having sex with teen boy

By Nikita Braxton
Tuesday, May 6th 2008

Trinidad and Tobago News Blog
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog

ViolenceA woman, charged with having sexual intercourse with a 17-year-old boy without his consent, was yesterday granted $80,000 bail and ordered to stay 100 feet away from the young man.

Reshmi Dipnarine, 21, of Calcutta Settlement, Freeport, appeared before Magistrate Melvin Daniel in the San Fernando Second Court charged with two counts of the offence, which allegedly occurred at Teak Avenue, Claxton Bay, on March 30 and April 4, 2008.
Continue reading Woman 21 charged for raping boy 17

Try Bas Again

By Andre Bagoo
Thursday, April 10 2008
T&T Newsday

Basdeo PandayOPPOSITION LEADER Basdeo Panday’s legal problems just got a little worse. More than one year after having his political life revitalised by the quashing of a criminal conviction against him, the Privy Council yesterday paved the way for him to face a retrial on three charges of failing to declare a joint London bank account to the Integrity Commission.

The three charges are the same charges he was freed of last year, on the basis of “apparent bias”.
Continue reading Try Bas Again

Priest defends decision to keep murder witness out of churchyard

I told you so, says Fr Rochard

By Nalinee Seelal
Tuesday, April 8 2008

newsday.co.tt

The Christian BibleRoman Catholic priest Fr Garfield Rochard who took a controversial decision late last year to stop a man who had witnessed a murder from entering the compound of the Church of the Assumption, Maraval, yesterday said the man’s murder over the weekend was expected.

The man Harold Joseph, 50, was gunned down outside Marmon’s Bar in Petit Valley on Saturday.
Continue reading Priest defends decision to keep murder witness out of churchyard

URP and Crime

Newsday Editorial
Thursday, March 27 2008

URPAt long last, the Government through National Security Minister Martin Joseph had admitted to a link between the high murder rate and the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP). The question is, what is going to be done about it?

It has taken the PNM administration a long time to reach even this partial admission. Indeed, at the start of the year, even as he acknowledged that the Government’s crime-fighting initiatives had failed, Mr Joseph denied the link between murder and URP — and mere days later denied that he had even said that the Government had failed. And it was only a few weeks ago that, after High Court judge Anthony Carmona spoke publicly about the URP link to crime, Mr Joseph declared stoutly that he had “no evidence of that”. Now, at a press briefing last Tuesday, he says that such a link is “very possible.”
Continue reading URP and Crime

Dad kills son, commits suicide

By Rhondor Dowlat
Tuesday, March 25 2008

ViolenceA POPULAR Bar-B-Que vendor, 48, of Cunupia who accused his wife of being unfaithful, gave his four-year-old son a poisonous liquid to drink and then took a dose himself sometime between Easter Sunday night and yesterday morning.

Their bodies were discovered by the child’s distraught mother, Jairagee Deolal, 42, lying side by side on a mattress of their newly bought Caroni home.
Continue reading Dad kills son, commits suicide

Soca Music and Moral Decadence

By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
March 25, 2008

SocaAs quiet as it is kept, Trinbagonians seem to be in long-term denial that there is a direct correlation between Soca music and moral decadence in TnT. As of this writing, the evidence is very clear and convincing that immorality and public sexual vulgarity have surpassed the nadir of their bottomless pit.

Indeed, there was a time “back-in-the-day” when “smut” in Calypso was respectful of and to women; this genre of popular music not only contained a serious, message-oriented story-line but any sexual behavior/activity was also implicit and left to the imagination.
Continue reading Soca Music and Moral Decadence

DNA Test clears rape accused

By Andre Bagoo
March 13, 2008

ViolenceA MAN who was charged with rape and who spent four years in prison after being identified by two women at a police identification parade, was yesterday set free and exonerated by DNA evidence which proved his innocence. It is the first time DNA has set an accused person free in a court of law in this country.

The man, who was arrested on November 19, 2003, had been charged with one count of rape, two counts of grevious sexual assault and two counts of robbery with aggravation in relation to an incident with two women on November 18, 2003 at a trail in Bon Air, just off the Priority Bus Route.
Continue reading DNA Test clears rape accused