DCP believes schools bomb scare was a hoax

ACTING DCP (Intelligence and Investigation) Curt Simon on Wednesday reiterated to the Joint Select Committee (JSC) on National Security his belief that the recent bomb threat sent by e-mail to 60 primary and secondary schools across TT was in fact a hoax.

He was replying to JSC member Dr Roodal Moonilal's request for an update.

Simon said the police service Special Branch was heading the investigation into the events of April 28, which includes trying to track down the source of the e-mails. They were reportedly routed through a number of overseas servers to make them harder to track.

Simon said, "I am personally involved in making certain connections with our foreign counterparts for speeding up the process. I have had two meetings with different entities in foreign countries concerning the process.

"Even they are expressing the challenges that they have. Even with the information we have already supplied, they are expressing the challenges they are having in finding or getting closer to what it is we may want in a quick time.

"They have expressed that these types of investigation are not uncommon, but the challenges do tend to persist, regardless of destination.

"So we await that process to be completed, and I am not minded at this time to even suggest a time frame in which I will get the response that I want, or we would like to hear. But the correspondence and the exchange of information is on a weekly basis at least."

Moonilal said this update had suggested the bomb scare had not been the work of a prankster, but Simon took the opposite view.

"We maintain that it is a hoax. It was and is a hoax."

No explosives were unearthed by police officers who visited affected schools, whose pupils were sent home early that day because of the scare.