Trinidad: Ex-coastguard officer killed in mysterious incident had been linked to attack on T&T man who fled to UK

(Trinidad Guardian) Dil­lian John­son who fled to the Unit­ed King­dom in 2017 af­ter he was shot out­side his home has writ­ten to British Prime Min­is­ter There­sa May ex­press­ing fear for his life fol­low­ing the sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances in which ex-coast guard of­fi­cer Richard “Mus­cle” Ed­wards died.

John­son has al­so asked the British gov­ern­ment to not on­ly, “lend their voic­es but your of­fices as well.”

John­son in his let­ter al­so emailed the British Home Sec­re­tary, Pe­ter Tatchell, a British hu­man rights cam­paign­er, and his lawyers who as­sist­ed him in ob­tain­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an pro­tec­tion by the UK gov­ern­ment.

John­son’s email en­ti­tled, “Fright­en­ing and alarm­ing sit­u­a­tions tak­ing place in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” said, This is not the first time al­le­ga­tions of “ac­ci­den­tal or death by sui­cide” has oc­curred sur­round­ing pow­er­ful peo­ple or sit­u­a­tions. These are the things that are be­ing cov­ered by pol­i­tics and the priv­i­leged as we speak in my coun­try.”

He con­tin­ued: “I am now fear­ful for my life here in Scot­land as this has now es­ca­lat­ed to new heights where all in­for­ma­tion giv­en in my 18-page state­ment to the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau was nev­er dealt with as a mat­ter of ur­gency by then for­mer Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams and those with­in at the bu­reau at the time it was giv­en.”

John­son point­ed out that present Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith has been re­lent­less­ly “pur­su­ing any and all leads day and night where this mat­ter is con­cerned and may need some as­sis­tance.”

John­son in the clos­ing lines of his email to the British gov­ern­ment said, “Evil pre­vails when good men sit idly by and do noth­ing, we must all take a stance for some­thing or fall any­thing. In con­clu­sion, it is a time that we all must unite in fo­cus­ing the eyes of the world on what’s hap­pen­ing in my beloved coun­try.”

Po­lice are still try­ing to as­cer­tain ex­act­ly how Ed­wards died af­ter it was re­port­ed he shot him­self with his 9 mm firearm at his busi­ness —Multi­na­tion­al Spe­cial­ist Net­work— lo­cat­ed in Cou­va on Fri­day night.

At least two ver­sions of the shoot­ing have cropped up but in­ves­ti­ga­tors are still try­ing to piece to­geth­er the facts based on the state­ments of at least 10 wit­ness­es.

Su­per­in­ten­dent Wayne Mys­tar of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion had re­vealed to Guardian Me­dia on Sat­ur­day, “We have some ver­sions and we are try­ing to as­cer­tain ex­act­ly what hap­pened. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion is at a sen­si­tive stage and we have at least ten per­sons we are in­ter­view­ing.”

Ed­wards, 50, Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed, was one of the peo­ple un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion for the shoot­ing of John­son out­side his Gas­par­il­lo home on De­cem­ber 3, 2017.

John­son sur­vived the at­tack and fled to the Unit­ed King­dom where he was lat­er grant­ed hu­man­i­tar­i­an pro­tec­tion for a pe­ri­od of five years.

Ed­wards was the per­son that John­son iden­ti­fied in his 18-page state­ment to po­lice back in De­cem­ber 2017.

John­son had told in­ves­ti­ga­tors then that he had cloned Ed­wards’ phone and un­cov­ered a se­ries of What­sApp con­ver­sa­tions be­tween Ed­wards, a high-rank­ing ju­di­cial of­fi­cer, and peo­ple in charge of ju­di­cia­ry se­cu­ri­ty.

In Jan­u­ary, Ed­wards was al­so iden­ti­fied by a woman (name with­held) in a sworn statu­to­ry de­c­la­ra­tion in which she iden­ti­fied Ed­wards. He had ap­proached her and asked her to point out the house where John­son lived in Gas­par­il­lo.

A few days lat­er, John­son was shot out­side his home.