By Raffique Shah
February 02, 2014
Within days of the announcement by US authorities that they had intercepted 700-odd pounds of cocaine shipped from Trinidad to Norfolk, Virginia, and the well-publicised arrival here of a number of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents, I sensed that something had gone awfully wrong.
Continue reading De ‘bust’ buss
Newsday Editorial
January 29, 2014 – newsday.co.tt
We fully support the current National Week of Prayer, as a potential tool against crime and other social ills, launched last Sunday by the Inter Religious Organisation (IRO) and Ministry of National Diversity and Social Integration.
We respect this nation’s diversity of beliefs including the right of a citizen to disbelieve, but we think the country at this socially-fragile time has more to gain than to lose through collective religious practices such as this Week of Prayer.
Continue reading Let us pray
By Raffique Shah
January 25, 2014
In my column last week, in recounting the legal encounters between the late Karl Hudson-Phillips and the progressive forces during the events of 1970, I made a serious omission that I now seek to rectify.
I mentioned the condonation pleas that set the mutinous soldiers free—their genesis and the attorneys who successfully pursued them. Readers need note that the court martial over which Nigeria’s Col Theophilus Danjuma presided, rejected the pleas (in bar of trial), which were made by Rex Lassalle, Maurice Noray and myself. The trial proceeded, and most of the soldiers were found guilty of mutiny and other offences, and sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment.
Continue reading Three eminent jurists
By Raffique Shah
January 19, 2014
Friends, Trinis, countrymen, I come not to praise Karl, nor indeed, to bury him. I come instead to tell some truths about Mr Hudson-Phillips, some complimentary, others unsavory, but which, wherever he may be, he would applaud me for having the courage to enunciate, honourable man that he was.
Continue reading I come not to praise Karl
By Jada Loutoo
January 17 2014 – newsday.co.tt
A QUINTESSENTIAL citizen of the world.
This was the description given to internationally renowned jurist Karl Terrence Hudson-Phillips, QC, by his close friend Ferdie Ferreira hours after learning of his sudden death in London, England, yesterday.
Hudson-Phillips, 80, died peacefully in his sleep in London where he and his wife Kathleen travelled last Tuesday to celebrate their son Kevin’s 30th birthday. He was expected to return to Trinidad next week.
Continue reading FEARLESS KARL
By Alexander Bruzual
January 07, 2014 – newsday.co.tt
TWO young men were yesterday gunned down in broad daylight next to Nelson Street Girls’ RC School in Port-of-Spain on the first day of the new school term — bringing to 16 the number of murders committed in the first six days of January. This, according to statistics, is the bloodiest start to a New Year in the past six years.
In the first six days of January 2008, 15 persons were murdered. The murder rate soared to 547 by December 31 of that year — the highest number of murders ever recorded in a calendar year in this country’s history.
Continue reading BLOODY HELL
By Raffique Shah
January 05, 2014
We have tried every conceivable strategy, many inconceivable ones, and some downright dotish crime plans. And we have failed—miserably so. From Anaconda to Iguana, Baghdad to Budapest (where we lost young footballer Akeem Adams to a heart attack, of all things!), nothing has stopped the march of the criminals.
Continue reading Surrender…and Die
By Joel Julien
January 07, 2014 – trinidadexpress.com
SIX out of every ten people murdered last year were involved in “serious criminal activities”, National Security Minister Gary Griffith has said.
Griffith said because the majority of murders committed in this country for 2013 was criminals killing criminals it was hard for the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service to protect them.
Continue reading Gary: Criminals killing criminals
By Raffique Shah
December 29, 2013
Politically, 2013 will be remembered as the year of unprecedented multiple elections. It was the year that marked the beginning of the demise of the People’s Partnership; the year in which Jack Warner’s meteor burned brightly before it died an unnatural death; and the year that saw the People’s National Movement (PNM), for yet another time, rise, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of defeat, to position itself for a return to power.
Continue reading Year of the Fall
By Raffique Shah
December 14, 2013
Among the three of them, Basdeo Panday, Jack Warner and Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj have accumulated 220 years on earth. You would think that these three geezers, having experienced a spread of political permutations, from the crown colony system and colonialism to independence and republicanism, would have also accumulated the wisdom to discern that they have long passed their political-expiry dates.
Continue reading Bas, Ram and Jack