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
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 Kim Boodram
January 15, 2014 – trinidadexpress.com
Satnarayan Maharaj, secretary general of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS), yesterday blamed the death of Pennywise stores heiress, Dian Paladee, at the hands of her former husband, on an “anger” that has settled on the country.
Continue reading Sat blames Dian’s death on ‘anger’ in T&T
By Raffique Shah
January 12, 2014
A tragic consequence of spikes in violent crimes such as we experienced in the first week of 2014, is the baying of the hounds, the blood-curdling cries for revenge that are as transient as the surges are cyclical. As soon as the murder rate settles back to what is normal for us, meaning one-a-day, the society will shift into the muted mode. People will hardly note the killing, and the police and government will enjoy a respite from outrage…until the next surge.
Continue reading Edge of the abyss
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 Stephen Kangal
December 06, 2013
This latest brewed in Jamaica cock-tail agreement linking, mixing, confusing and commingling the quite separate and unrelated T&T-Jamaica trade imbalance with its immigration concerns has deceptive potions of toxicity. It must be rejected as being artificial, very synthetic and an imposition of Kingston on POS. It is aimed at refashioning, re-allocating and distorting the beneficial effects of the geography and sociology of T&T generously conferred by history and Mother Earth on us Trinbagonians. After all God is a Trini.
Continue reading T&T-Jamaica Agreement is a Toxic Cock-Tail
By Raffique Shah
November 23, 2013
Avid readers of fiction, more so Jeffrey Archer fans, will immediately note that I stole this headline from one of the writer’s successful novels, A Prisoner of Birth. I did this deliberately, for several reasons.
For the uninitiated, Lord Archer is a Conservative peer whose best-selling novels have topped 150 million copies. He also served a four-year jail sentence for perjury, so he knows about prisons and imprisonment inside out, in a manner of speaking. In fact, he spent some of his jail time in the high-security Belmarsh Prison located in London.
Continue reading Prisoners of Birth
By Raffique Shah
August 24, 2013
Not since late Commissioner of Police Jules Bernard publicly declared, “I’m a toothless bulldog!” have I heard so many outlandish statements coming from the mouths of senior officers of the Police Service.
“Criticism hurts,” screams Acting CoP Stephen Williams. Yet, Williams and his most senior officers say and do the most ludicrous things, inviting not just criticism, but oftentimes, bellyfuls of laughter.
Continue reading Comic cops
By Raffique Shah
May 26, 2013
I CANNOT quite figure out why so many people are shocked by Keith Rowley’s “revelations” in Parliament last Monday, or alarmed that the string of e-mails he read into Hansard; at first blush, appears to be as bogus as Clifton De Coteau’s black mop. Parliament has long degenerated into a theatre of the absurd, a forum for dishonourable members to slander and scandalise each other, an arena in which targeted citizens are crucified before hordes of reality-television viewers, a fate far worse than that which Jesus Christ is said to have suffered however many centuries ago.
Continue reading A matter of trust