Sat Maharaj and another SDMS executive member, Devant Maharaj, were victims of the illicit operations that Prime Minister Kamla persad-Bissessar exposed in Parliament Friday. Attorney General Anand Ramlogan, who was an attorney for the religious group and himself a Hindu, was also on the list.
Maharaj made the comments at a media conference. He said the "illegal espionage" by the Strategic Intelligence Agency (SIA) seemed to target the leadership of only one religious group.
"We notice that no other religious organisation had their leadership under the surveillance of the Manning administration. Why only the Hindu community?" he asked. "We are concerned about that and we will be pursuing this wherever it takes us," he added.
The SDMS is taking legal action against the State and has taken the first steps by writing to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Roger Gaspard.
The letter, delivered Tuesday, states that based on the information presented to Parliament by the Prime Minister "there certainly exists a prima facie basis for investigating" five offences relating to the wire-tapping matter:
- A charge of misconduct or misbehaviour in public office against all persons involved in the SIA's illegal wire-tapping
- A charge of money laundering, fraudulent conversion and cheating the public revenue for the "vast sums of money" used by the SIA to pay informants
- A charge of conspiracy to defraud for "those who would have participated in securing the funding and using the funds for such illegal and unlawful purposes"
- A specific charge of misconduct in public office against former head of the SIA, Nigel Clement
- Offences against the Computer Misuse Act because the "SIA was secretly monitoring and accessing the private e-mail accounts of various citizens
No comments:
Post a Comment