(Trinidad Express) Lawyers acting on behalf of Newsday have called on Police Commissioner Dwayne Gibbs to explain why a marked police vehicle was stationed outside the home of reporter Andre Bagoo on Sunday night.
In a letter to Gibbs yesterday, attorney Rajesh Ramoutar called the presence of the police vehicle a “transparent attempt to intimidate” Bagoo.
In the letter, Ramoutar said the Anti-Corruption and Investigation Bureau (ACIB) “made it clear” neither Bagoo nor Newsday were suspected of any offence.
“The searches which were effected at their offices and home were merely for the purpose of obtaining evidence relative to an ongoing investigation in relation to other persons,” Ramoutar said in the letter.
“In those circumstances it seems plain that the stationing of a marked car at our client’s home was a transparent attempt to intimidate; an act of petulant retaliation for our client’s public criticism of the raid which was effected,” the lawyer said.
Ramoutar said the act caused “tremendous anxiety not only to our clients but also to the other members of Mr Bagoo’s family”.
“We view this action as a serious act of misconduct on the part of the Police Service and expect that as a responsible commissioner you will immediately take steps to investigate,” Ramoutar, of the firm Ashmead and Co, said.
The lawyers want to know who was responsible for the stationing of the police vehicle and the reason for it and said they hoped the letter to the commissioner would forestall any “overzealous actions” on the part of the members of the Police Service.
Ramoutar dismissed Gibbs’s suggestion that the “mere possession of a search warrant” gave police officers licence to effect a raid at a media house or home of a journalist.
“The action undertaken was disproportionate in scope and an unprecedented abuse of police power,” he said.
“Our clients demand the immediate return of seized property,” Ramoutar said.
Newsday also issued a statement yesterday denouncing the police vehicle parked outside Bagoo’s home.
“There were two men in the vehicle and the engine was running for the entire time, with headlights turned off in a dark area outside the house,” the statement noted, adding that Bagoo was not even at home at the time of the incident.
The paper repeated its “strong condemnation” of the search and seizure of computers at both its office and Bagoo’s home last Thursday and called on Gibbs to treat the matter with the “urgency it deserves”.
Last Thursday, nine policemen attached to the ACIB and led by Senior Supt Solomon Koon Koon executed a warrant and searched the offices of Newsday with respect to an article Bagoo wrote on December 20, 2011 about a row between Integrity Commission chairman Ken Gordon and deputy chairman Gladys Gafoor.
The police seized a computer used by Bagoo in their search for information about the sources he used to write his story. Police also went to Bagoo’s home and seized computers there.
