Dana Seetahal Murder – One Dozen Days Later But Still No Arrest

Murdered minutes from home! – Dana Seetahal, senior counsel and former independent senator of Trinidad & Tobago.

By NAN Staff Writer

News Americas, PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad, Fri. May 16, 2014: Today will mark the 12th day since prominent Trinidad & Tobago state prosecutor, former senator, lecturer and columnist, Dana Seetahal, was boldly ambushed and gunned down in her car on her way home in Woodbrook, Port-of-Spain on May 4th.

To date, however, despite the talk from politicians including the Prime Minister of the twin-island Republic, Kamla Persad-Bissessar – who promised to leave no stone unturned in the investigation of the murder – not a single soul has been arrested eight days after Seetahal was cremated.

While there were claims of a May 10th arrest by a leading newspaper in Trinidad, those reports were quickly denied by Trinidad & Tobago’s Acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams; Assistant Commissioner of Police Wayne Dick, the head of the Homicide Investigations Bureau; and National Security Minister Gary Griffith.

To date, all we know, according to Dick, is that no arrests have been made but that investigations are still ongoing even as the reward for information into Seetahal’s murder rose to some US$600,000. That’s all the police is giving. No possible motive, nothing!

No “Operation Anaconda?,” no curfews, no door to door searches, no army in the streets, no ‘drones’ that the former prime minister spent millions of tax payer dollars on, no Offshore Patrol Vessels plan and no Special Anti-Crime Unit of Trinidad and Tobago.

And certainly no move by any side to seriously implement the many recommendation made by the Law Association in 2008, that includes monitoring persons convicted of certain crimes.

The media so far seems to have more to go on than the T&T police which is grappling with some 152 murders already for this year, excluding Seetahal’s.

The Barbados Newspaper, the Nation, has reported that the main hired killer of Seetahal, a state prosecutor in the case of a supermarket executive Vindra Naipaul-Coolman who was kidnapped from her home in December 2006 and later killed, is from Carapo, a place with a very small population in the region of Caroni, Trinidad.

The paper also says this man has the initial NM; has ties to a Muslim-based organization; beat a murder rap in 2011 and was released from jail and has been operating with impunity for more than four years.

And another clue yet – the alleged killer, according to the Nation, has been a major player in bringing in guns and ammunition into this country from Venezuela and one or two other countries

The other killer is believed to have the initial “DB” and be from Malabar, a residential district incorporated into the borough of Arima, Trinidad.
In Trinidad, the size of the state of Delaware, USA, with a population of 1.337 million people, how many NMs and DBs with those street credentials can there be?

Yet to date, no arrests for the woman who stood up for justice for many. Now as many in the legal and business community especially worry and wonder if they could be next, many are wondering where Seetahal’s assassination will fall the route of the many other unsolved murders in T&T, including the August 2013 killing of attorney-at-law Wesley Debideen, who was shot to death seven times in his car, in full view of patrons at Grand Bazaar but whose killer has never been brought to justice.