ANTIGUA — A routine airport transfer erupted into a political storm on Monday when Trinidad and Tobago’s former prime minister Dr Keith Rowley was halted by immigration officers during a brief stopover at VC Bird International Airport. The 75-year-old geologist, en route to Montserrat to join events commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, was informed that his name appeared on an INTERPOL watch list.
Rowley, who retired from frontline politics in April, denounced the incident as “state-sponsored slander.” Speaking at an emergency press briefing after being allowed to continue his journey, he accused unidentified agencies in Port of Spain of orchestrating a “methodical, malicious” effort to discredit him abroad.
“This was no clerical blunder,” Rowley asserted. “Someone in authority engineered an international smear to undermine my reputation.”
The former prime minister called on his successor, Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar, and Police Commissioner Allister Guevarro to disclose any involvement local law-enforcement bodies may have had in prompting the INTERPOL alert.
“Tell the public what crime you think I’ve committed,” he said. “If a former head of government can be treated like this, imagine the vulnerability of the ordinary citizen.”
Rowley’s legal team has begun preparations for formal requests under both domestic freedom-of-information statutes and INTERPOL’s own dispute mechanisms to determine how his data was flagged. Meanwhile, opposition lawmakers demanded an independent parliamentary inquiry, warning that any politically motivated misuse of international policing channels would set a dangerous precedent for Caricom democracies.
No official statement has yet been released by the Office of the Prime Minister or the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service.
