Trinidad Journalist On Hit List?

Mark Bassant

News Americas, PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Thurs. May 22, 2014: Fifteen days after the ambush and murder of senior prosecutor, Dana Seetahal in the twin-island of Trinidad & Tobago, a senior investigative television journalist has reported receiving death threats that has forced him to flee the country.

Head of news at Caribbean Communication Network (CCN) TV6 Trinidad, Dominic Kallipersad, told viewers Wednesday night that journalist Mark Bassant has left the country after several death threats.

The threats have been reported to National Security Minister Gary Griffith and Acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams.

Kallipersad said Bassant, who has worked at the TV station for the past three years, had received the threats while working on sensitive investigative material including about “key underworld criminals.”

Bassant was quoted by the Trinidad Express as saying that on May 7th he received a call “from a very reliable underworld source that certain criminal elements wanted to harm me because of stories I wrote recently that were showing them up.”

Bassant said he reported it to “certain police officers involved in a specific investigation, only to later learn from other trusted sources that these same officers who I had spoken to earlier were leaking information about me and what I knew to the said individuals who organized for my demise.”

He also told the paper that the hit against him started at TT$20,000. Bassant has done several investigative exposes in the past including on former government minister Jack Warner and ‘Jihadists Among Us.’