SSA shakedown – director, pastor, two others arrested, face gun charges

IN its first major breakthrough into the alleged unsanctioned operations of the Strategic Services Agency (SSA), considered one of the most effective covert weapons in the fight against serious crime, police have detained four people – its director Major Roger Best, a decorated soldier; Ian Albert Ezekiel Brown, the charismatic pastor of the Jerusalem Bride Church; and two others.

The SSA is authorised to intercept communications after obtaining court orders under the Interception of Communication Act. The agency reports directly to the National Security Council, chaired by the Prime Minister, which includes the Minister of National Security and the Attorney General, among others.

The National Security Council is charged with monitoring matters relating to defence and national security and is serviced by a secretariat.

The operation was carried out between May 15 and 16 by a hand-picked team of investigators who arrested Best, Brown, Portell Griffith, the former security supervisor of the SSA, and Sgt Sherwin Waldron, who was formerly assigned to the Special Operations Response Team (SORT).

Investigators of the Professional Standards Bureau, under Snr Supt Alva Gordon, are expected to charge the suspects formally on May 17.

Best faces a charge of being in possession of a prohibited weapon. Three other suspects are expected to be charged with transferring prohibited weapons, all bailable offences.

Police executed search warrants at the suspects' homes in search of electronic devices, including iPads and cellphones as well as weapons and ammunition – including Sig Sauer MPX rifles with optics allegedly belonging to the police service. The warrants also allow the police to interrogate any communications data, and stored data and extract it from the electronic devices.

The culmination of arrests followed a two-and-a-half-month-long investigation into a wide range of allegations against SSA agents, a series of interviews, including one with former commissioner of police Gary Griffith, and consultations with Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard, SC.

Under the direction of Police Commissioner Erla Harewood-Christopher and DCP Investigations and Intelligence Suzette Martin, the investigative team interviewed Best and the other suspects last week before consulting the DPP.

The allegation against Best is that he was in possession of a prohibited weapon, a MP5K Heckler and Koch automatic submachine gun, in contravention of the Firearm Act. Police said Best surrendered the weapon to the Air Guard at Piarco in March, after he was sent on administrative leave on March 2.

The allegation against the other three surrounds the acquisition of four rifles, including two automatic Sig Sauer MPX guns and two other high-powered rifles, from the now-defunct SORT. The weapons which were kept in SORT's Cumuto base were handed over to the SSA, reportedly on the instructions of a senior police officer.

In mid-March, Brown returned the four high-powered 5.56 calibre rifles days before he was dismissed as a special reserve police officer by Harewood-Christopher.

Section 6 (2) of the Firearm Act prohibits anyone, with the exception of the police, defence force, customs officers, prison officers and the director of the Forensic Science Centre from possessing an automatic weapon. The penalty for the offence is on summary conviction a fine of $75,000 and imprisonment for 15 years; or, on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for 20 years.

Section 9 (1) says anyone who sells or transfers a firearm or ammunition to anyone else who does not hold or who is not exempted from holding a firearm user’s licence is liable on summary conviction to a fine of $75,000 or imprisonment for eight years; or, on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for 15 years.

In early March, the Prime Minister, as head of the National Security Council, announced Best’s removal from office shortly after Dr Rowley returned from a trip to Washington, DC, where he met with the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other top US intelligence officials. Rowley cited an impending threat to national security as the reason for the decision.

National security sources said the PM's decision was triggered by a confidential Special Branch report which detailed the activities of the Jerusalem Bride Church and the overwhelming influence of key players in the SSA, the defence force and the police hierarchy. Several members of the church, including Brown, his wife and son, were employed as agents of the SSA under Best.

The PM recalled retired Brig Gen Anthony Phillips-Spencer, Trinidad and Tobago’s ambassador to the US, to replace Best.

Since then several agents of the SSA, including deputy director Joanne Bartholomew-Daniel, have been sent on leave and others terminated. Phillips-Spencer terminated a total of 13 civilians, including Brown, his wife and his son.

Phillips-Spencer did an audit at the agency over the last two months, in an effort to weed out those who were allegedly compromised, national security sources said.

A team of 12 highly-trained operatives, all former soldiers, who were assigned to the SSA's Tactical Response Team, were also dismissed.

On March 19, Rowley made the shocking claim that state agencies have become one with criminal elements during a sod-turning ceremony for the Caura Housing Development, in a clear reference to details emerging from the probe into the SSA, which is based at Knowsley, Queen's Park Savannah, Port of Spain.

“For the last two weeks, we have been dealing with the state contribution to that (crime) problem, where state authorities in positions of trust have broken down and the calypso Who’s Going to Guard the Guard is now the most important question.”

On March 9, police raided the home of Brown, a special reserve police officer, who worked for the SSA, and was reportedly a close ally of senior officials there.

Police also raided the site of an extension of Brown’s church in Caratal, Cumuto. After the scandal broke, the church’s website and social media pages were deactivated.

In an interview on Power 102FM on March 12, Brown, who claimed to be an undercover SSA intelligence officer, said he feared for his life after his “cover was blown.”

Brown, in that interview, threatened to release damning national security information to the public if he was harmed.