Caribbean Times 12.02.2016

26
Caribbean Times | December 1-14, 2016
SPORTS
Continued from page 21
judging from the location of a speed
bump to where her vehicle came to a full
stop, the road showed no skid marks.
Therefore the speed at which the victim
would have hit her brakes and came to
a full stop did not allow for any momentum
to build up. Therefore, she would
have been going at 10km/hr (6 mph) or
less.
He said this was such a well planned
hit that they may have followed her several
times beforehand to learn her likely
momentum, routine and speed habits.
He said the perpetrators would have
timed exactly as she crossed the hump,
slowing her vehicle down, stopping in
front of her that she couldn’t run over the
wagon with any force.
The fact that the blocking vehicle may
have been in the parking lot at the casino
did not make the victim suspicious when
the vehicle stopped in front of her, and
perhaps the perpetrators may have been
regular visitors at the casino and Seetahal
was familiar with them and their vehicle.
He also said the fact that her vehicle
did not show any signs of damage to the
front indicated that there was no collision.
The reaction time of the shooters
would have been 1.5-2.5 seconds from
the moment the door of the panel van
opened to the moment the fatal shot was
fired. It was exact precision. He said that
requires a lot of skill and military training.
The victim had no time to react. He
said the kind of training that was applied
in the way the operation was carried out
is consistent with a SWAT team and Special
Forces.
Many theories about Seetahal's assassination
being linked to the police service
and the elite in the country included
all or some of the following potential
components:
1. Drug traffickers in South America.
Transnational drug gangs figured out
that Trinidad was an easy way to ship
bulk cocaine from Venezuela and Colombia,
break the cocaine into parcels at
safe houses on smaller islands in Trinidad
and other points, reseal, package
and send them to the United States and
Europe.
2. Government officials aligned to
more than one political party tied to human
trafficking and the illegal drug trade
with counterparts outside of Trinidad.
Seetahal was investigating this.
3. In December 2013, agents from US
Customs and Border Protection were
conducting routine X-rays of containers
coming into the port at Norfolk, Virginia,
when they detected suspicious patterns
emanating from a 20-foot shipping container
full of cans of orange juice. Investigators
opened the cans individually and
found a strange mix of orange juice and
white powder pressed into cylindrical
molds. Homeland Security officials said,
“This was a very unique concealment
effort.” When the cocaine was weighed
and valued, it weighed 732 pounds and
carried a street value of US$100 million.
Local government financiers with ethnic
backgrounds from the Middle East
were said to be behind this shipment.
Officials at the US DEA confirmed that
the juice brand in question had an unblemished
proven track record around
the world for over 30 years. They were a
natural, innocent target. Seetahal was in
partnership with the US DEA investigating
this matter.
4. A Mexican drug cartel with local
links. Seetahal was investigating this.
5. One of the most talked about issues
in the country. A May 2, 2014, Trinidad
Express newspaper column was written
by Seetahal, calling for an investigation
into letters sent to the then prime minister
Kamla Persad Bissesser by the then
solicitor general Elanor Donaldson-Honeywell,
headed “Report proposing the
need for an investigation into litigation
against the state arising from incidents in
the Prison Service".
The solicitor general highlighted the need
for an investigation into circumstances that
may “amount to breaches of professional
ethics by attorneys involved that may have
the effect of perverting the course of justice
in litigation against the state".
Institutions the solicitor general said
should be investigated were: (1) The Police
service; (2) Inspector of Prisons; (3)
The Law Association.
Former attorney general Anand Ramlogan,
the subject of a scandal he was
involved in called "The Prison Litigation
Scandal", said he was being wrongfully
accused of plotting Seetahal’s assassination.
Seetahal and her sister Susan Francois,
director of the finance ministry’s
Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), were
investigating this case. One day after the
column was printed Seetahal was shot
dead.
6. The murder-kidnapping of a Chaguanas
business woman Vindra Niapaul
Coolman. Seetahal was working on this
case.
7. And finally, a Muslim group working
under the Lifesport program, called
Jamaat al Muslimeem, a group that was
said to have received large sums of cash
to assassinate Seetahal. A Muslim Lifesport
coordinator Rajee Ali is now behind
bars accused of her murder. Investigators
said they found sufficient evidence connecting
him to Seetahal’s murder. Thirteen
men from Jamaat al Muslimeem
were arrested on suspicion of carrying
out that assassination, causing many to
ask why 13 men were accused of a murder
that took one or two shooters using
one or two guns to kill one person.
In a Trinidad Guardian newspaper
article dated May 25, 2003, Seetahal accused
the Jamaat al Muslimeen for being
responsible for most of the crime in
Trinidad and Tobago. Reading the headlines
from a local newspaper in a Senate
debate that day she recited, "Jamaat in
heroin trade; Jamaat in smuggling heroin
in Trinidad and Tobago; ATF trained;
Traced guns for Trinidad and Tobago
government; Jamaat in gun trafficking
and Jamaat with terrorist cell in the US."
In a televised broadcast following Seetahal's
murder, Persad Bissessar and then
minister of national security Gary Griffith
addressed the nation, describing the
assassination as a well orchestrated mafia
style killing.
Persad Bissessar stated: "As prime
minister, I am resolutely committed to
meeting the viciousness which Dana Seetahal’s
brilliant life was cut down on the
terms she would have wanted and fought
so courageously and fearlessly every
day. Dana Seetahal would have fought
with her last breath to ensure justice was
served. By our response let us preserve
that legacy. Mere expressions and sympathy
and regrets are not enough. It is
with profound sadness and shock that
I learned of the tragic death of a dear
friend and colleague. It is a reprehensible
act which has robbed us all of one of our
nation’s best and brightest daughters."
However, key evidence has already
gone. Officials cleaned the blood stained
SUV, repaired the bullet holes and put
the vehicle up for sale at public auction,
widely reported as “Dana’s Death Car For
Sale”, on January 30, 2016.
Some asked, “If UNC officials alone
had everything to do with Dana’s killing
as the local media painted, why did the
PNM government conceal and sell the
evidence and not hold the evidence in
a forensics lab after gaining supremacy
in the 2015 general elections and by not
fighting to bring the masterminds and hit
men to justice?”
Meanwhile, a Special Branch officer,
who was one of the police investigators
into Seetahal's murder stated that the police
have done all they could have done.
Now everything and all the evidence is in
the hands of the present attorney general
Faris al Rawi and it's up to him now to do
something.
"What we have seen thus far is nothing
is being done by him to address this matter,"
the officer stated.
Many are now asking if Seetahal’s murder
will ever be solved to public satisfaction.
Or is it that her murder was planned
by persons she was investigating on both
sides of the political fence?
In reality, the truth of what actually
happened may be lost forever by the inaction
and silence of officials from both
sides of the political divide.
Her flesh may be gone but Seetahal’s
spirit and legacy will undeniably live on
and on in every individual heart and
mind who knew of her and the contribution
she made to society. Dana Seetahal
will always be one of the most respected
senior counsel the nation of Trinidad and
Tobago has ever produced.
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