ttgapers.com

Two officers of the Organised Crime and Narcotic Unit travelled to Canada last week in the ongoing probe into the discovery of cocaine in a diplomatic pouch to Trinidad and Tobago’s New York mission. 

Well-placed sources said an ASP and a sergeant went to the Trinidad and Tobago consulate in Canada on Thursday to check the movements of one of the diplomatic pouches. The officers were due to leave Canada on Friday for London and then to the USA, two other countries identified along with Canada as destination points for the drugs.

Local police officers said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police cannot interfere in the matter because of diplomatic immunity. Police sources told the Sunday Guardian that the officers’ international trips was sanctioned at the Ministerial level. “Where diplomacy is concerned, they are very cautious,” a high-placed source said.

Three employees, including two women, from foreign postings in Canada, London and New York, were recalled after packets of cocaine were found in the diplomatic pouches between May 10 and 12 in the US and in Trinidad and Tobago. They were questioned by OCNU and classified as ‘low level’ employees.

Their names were reportedly on the packages that contained the cocaine. They were later released. Police identified one of them as Jaqueline Britto of the Trinidad and Tobago Consular in Toronto. Britto, of Morvant, hung up the telephone when the Sunday Guardian contacted her in Canada on Thursday.

Michael Lashley, Trinidad and Tobago’s Consular General in Canada, on Thursday, also ducked questions as to whether or not Britto was questioned by local police officers in connection with the cocaine in diplomatic pouches fiasco. “I am not denying that she was in Trinidad, but I myself was also in Trinidad,” Lashley said. Lashley would not say if Britto was in Trinidad for the ongoing investigations and noted that several people were in Trinidad because the cocaine in diplomatic pouches find was an administrative matter. “She (Britto) is not the subject of any judicial process,” Lashley said.

He refused to comment further, saying the Trinidad and Tobago Government had already made two statements on the subject and no further statement was forthcoming except to say the police and judicial process will take its course. “It will be irresponsible of me,” Lashley said. Meanwhile, local police said they had no evidence to charge the people who were questioned. “We have to weigh the evidence, because we do not want to look like fools in court,” a senior officer said. He said the investigations were far from over.