Trinidad: Prison officer’s home firebombed

By Stabroek News On In Trinidad & Tobago News |
The effect of the firebomb attack could be seen on prison officer Khalil Baksh’s home yesterday.
The effect of the firebomb attack could be seen on prison officer Khalil Baksh’s home yesterday.

(TRINIDAD GUARDIAN) Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing an in­ci­dent in which a prison of­fi­cer’s Tacarigua home was fire­bombed ear­ly yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the at­tack oc­curred around 1.20 am while Khalil Baksh, 53, who is as­signed to the East­ern Cor­rec­tion and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre in San­ta Rosa, and his son, who is a po­lice of­fi­cer, were at home.

The fa­ther and son were awak­ened by a loud crash­ing noise and when they came out­side they found a bro­ken win­dow pane and a small fire around it. They ex­tin­guished the fire and con­tact­ed po­lice.

Video footage of the in­ci­dent cap­tured on CCTV cam­eras on Baksh’s home, showed two men walk­ing in the road and stop­ping in front of Baksh’s home. The men then took out chan­na bombs (Molo­tov cock­tails with dried chick­peas) from a bag they were car­ry­ing, lit three and hurled them to­wards the house be­fore walk­ing away. The men did not ap­pear to be wear­ing masks when car­ry­ing out the act.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) sec­re­tary Ger­ard Gor­don con­firmed the in­ci­dent. He said his or­gan­i­sa­tion and se­nior prison of­fi­cers had spo­ken to Baksh yes­ter­day morn­ing. Gor­don de­clined to re­veal what se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, if any, have been in­sti­tut­ed for Baksh and his fam­i­ly since.

No ar­rests had been made up to late yes­ter­day. Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing whether the in­ci­dent was linked to his job or an in­ci­dent which oc­curred while he was on du­ty.

Yes­ter­day’s in­ci­dent came three days af­ter act­ing Prison Su­per­in­ten­dent Wayne Jack­son was mur­dered. Jack­son, who was as­signed to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca, had just ar­rived at his Mal­abar home when he was am­bushed and shot dead by gun­men.

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and a team of of­fi­cers from the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) toured the prison to de­ter­mine ar­eas where mem­bers of the unit could be de­ployed. The unit was im­plant­ed in the MSP on Thurs­day.