Terrorism bill gets passage

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Parent Category: Feb 2012

Category: Week end Feb 18th, 2012

Published on Monday, 20 February 2012 20:17

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A new legislation criminalizing the act of terrorism in the county has been passed in the House of Representatives. The bill, which makes provision to combat terrorism and terrorist financing, was passed during last week Friday’s sitting.

Prime Minister and Minister of National Security, Tillman Thomas who tabled the bill informed the House that the move to enact the legislation brings the island in line with a global initiative to fight terrorism. The Terrorism Bill, 2012 empowers the Court to order the forfeiture of anything in a person’s possession that is connected with the offence of terrorism. 

The new legislation will criminalise the act of providing or receiving instructions or training in the use of weapons. This includes instruction or training in the use of firearms, explosives, chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or any other weapon or means of mass destruction.

The Royal Grenada Police Force (RGPF) will have to apply to a  Magistrate or High Court to carry out the enforcement aspect as provided for under the Bill. Police Officers are legislated to act based on having a reasonable suspicion that particular persons may be involved in terrorism or they possess articles which may be used for such purposes.

PM Thomas who sat in as Leader of Government Business in the absence of Finance Minister, Nazim Burke, said that all who wants to live in peace and security should support the Bill. “We live in a world where we have extremists. We have political extremists, religious extremists, we have all forms of extremists in the world”, he said.

“Everyone has to guard against extremism and as a tourism destination would not want any act of terrorism to be performed on the tri-island”, he added. Former Minister of Legal Affairs, Elvin Nimrod complimented government for amending certain parts of the Bill following last month’s sitting during which the Bill was withdrawn following concerns from the Opposition.

These include the removal of powers from the Minister of National Security to instruct an officer to intercept communication. This power will be given to the judiciary (a high court judge). The power given to a Justice of the Peace to sign and issue warrants was also removed.

However, Nimrod raised additional concerns in the Bill such as client/attorney privilege, which is universal, as well as the minister’s power to instruct a public servant to disclose public information, the monitoring of accounts and also recommended that the Bill should be named the Anti-Terrorism Bill, 2012. Nimrod said that while the opposition New National Party (NNP) supports the Bill and any acts against terrorism, it does not mean that citizens will have to surrender their own basic fundamental rights.

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