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Who are the real crimminals? Tell me again
Posted: Sunday, January 22, 2006

By Linda Edwards

1. We have a trial currently going on in San Fernando, a high profile wife murder in which a man's second wife is allegedly killed as a hit. The convicted hit man apparently had no prior contact with the victim, but was sprung out of jail for this sole purpose.

A. Who provided the money to get him out? To which prison officer(s)? or Magistrates?

B. He said he left TnT on a false passport, in the name of one Jackson- and was admitted to the USA on it. Now, should the police not check who at Immigration validated these passport documents and for what consideration? One hears continuous horror stories of trouble getting passports. I have seen the line around the US Embassy waiting for visas. Yet a man is sprung from prison, commits a murder, and this known criminal gets a visa to visit the USA where he overstays. More money pass? Was he fingerprinted for his visa application, like everyone else? Did he have to get a police certificate of good character for every place he lived? If he could pass all these tests unaided, then every criminal from everywhere needs to migrate to the USA. They could get work and live better lives.

It suggests that some money passed, and not only into the hands of TnT officials.

Now, if Mr. Parris could have negotiated all of this on his own, why would he turn to hit killings in the first place?

Also, could someone please say what happened to Dr. Vijay's first wife? Chandra was the second. Did she die too? Of what? Should that be looked into? What did the Morris brother (Ken) and "Rev" die of? A US TV company would find this the stuff of a great series. Could there be a serial killer involved when so many people connected to the killing die? Would Parris have been alive if he had not fled to the USA.?

2. My second comment concerns the first accused in the current trial. A school teacher, acting alone, on the pennies that teachers make in TnT, she allegedly paid all that money to have a woman eliminated just because she was fooling around with someone. then she married the dead woman's husband. Where did she get the large sums allegedly paid to have that beautiful young doctor murdered? And ten thousand dollars for the child? The same child in the photo-op holding her father's hand coming out of court? Does she know how close she came to death, poor thing?

3. That her father married her mother's accused killer must be the stuff of nightmares in the daytime. The possibility of it being more than just marriage, but conspiracy to murder, including her, the child, is absolutely frightening.

4. The fourth comment concerns the second accused as well as the first. Next time the public in TnT hears some member of the business community threatening "To migrate" to escape crime, I want them to pause and give serious thought to the fact that he or she may be running from the consequences of their own misdeeds. The elaborate system of freeing Mr. Parris from the remand yard, so that he can go do a hit on Chandra suggests lots of money. Money that a schoolteacher should not have if school teaching was her business.

Sometimes the forensic trail can lead to the mastermind. Follow he money. It may not have been stored in a bank, one hears stories of paper bags and pillow cases being the new favored savings plan for the criminally minded, but there may be a money trail with the appropriate dates that could be picked up on.

Certainly one immigration officer, at least, has a charge to answer.

In addition: Today's headlines point to two police officers suspended for car theft, and one prison officer arrested for receiving marijuana inside the prison walls. Previous headlines included a policeman charged with raping a fellow officer. Ministers of government of both parties have been arrested for corruption, and one politician has confessed to bribing two ministers to get a contract.

I would respectfully suggest that crime fighting lift its sights from Laventille and the so-called East West corridor, and focus on the South. That's where the money and the crime may be hiding. Certainly more bodies are emerging from cane fields and other places almost weekly.

Years ago, there was a rumour circulating in a major state enterprise about bribery and corruption involving cars, boats and laundered cash. A prestigious panel under the NAR was appointed to look into it in 1987. Many managers testified about what they knew. The ramifications of corruption were apparently so deep that no report was ever issued. One fact was verifiable. A new car "owned" by someone in the top echelons of the company, was registered with the licensing office as being insured on a Sunday.

The document on this was hand written, and replaced a computerized one. Obviously, someone had changed it, but did not note that the new date, put in to cover whatever was needed to be covered up, was a Sunday.

This was reported in the Mirror when Raffique Shah was its editor. That was almost twenty years ago.

High powered people in TnT have been in the forefront of crime for a long time. Now, they have gotten bolder, that is all,; and in the manner of the Wild West, and Chicago in gangster times, they hire people to take out anyone who bothers them. They know who to hire, and how much to pay, and they have the ready cash. We cleared a man who killed the deputy Chief of Customs- who had been too squeaky clean to let stuff go past him. We cleared a man on a technicality, who was found in possession of a major drug haul. Does the sate have to return ill-gotten gains because a clever lawyer won on a technicality?

Perhaps most of the killing in the East West corridor is not related to warfare over ten day work at all, but warfare over big ten second jobs of murder for hire. Parris proves that once the reasearch has been done, it takes only a few seconds to wife the smile off a beautiful face forever.

Corruption and crime in Trinidad and Tobago is the Aegean Stables of our country. A cleansing river needs to run through it.



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