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Last night we told you the L109A1 grenade tossed into a crowd of Carnival spectators on Saturday was British, tonight we can confirm that originated from the BATSUB training unit in Ladyville. That’s the bottom line on a cursory investigation conducted by the British Forces in Belize. As Jacqueline Godwin found out today, that’s one key answer which leads to many more questions, mainly how did it get from the British Forces into presumably Belizean hands.

Jacqueline Godwin Reporting,
Today the Commander of the British Army Training Support Unit in Belize Lt. Col Peter Germain confirmed to 7NEWS that grenade thrown in front of the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital on Sunday night, the l109a1 green” is one of the grenades that was among a batch of one hundred and sixty that was issued to his training unit late last year.

Jacqueline Godwin,
When were you guys issued grenade?

Lt. Col. Peter Germain, Commander – BATSUB
“Well okay I made some checks and from our spot checks it was August 2007 that we got a batch of 160 delivered to Belize. We had have other batches delivered but we were able to distinguished by the serial numbers on that grenade the exact batch, so that’s how we know that was in country of August of 07.”

The grenade is used strictly for combat and live training in exercises organized by BATSUB in Belize’s jungles.

Lt. Col. Peter Germain,
“We do have, as you would imagine, a comprehensive, and the regulations require us to have a comprehensive regulations on how we account for this sort of ammunition and we have checked and we know exactly how many grenades we’ve received, how many been issued, how many have been returned to us, and how many we were supposed to have in the ammunition compound. And I can confirm that all we are required to have there, or we should have there according to our papers, are in place and in the compound. The compound itself, all the ammunition is stored in fortified explosive storage buildings and the perimeter of the compound is patrolled and manned by armed by BDF soldiers. o I’m confident having done the management checks on the paperwork, having looked at the security in the compound, as things currently stand, the grenade certainly didn’t come from within the compound.”

Rather it is believed that the breach in security occurred in one of the six training exercises held over the past year. But just how did this grenade get from the jungle training facility into the hands of urban terrorists? That’s the question that a lengthy, detailed investigation will have to answer.

Lt. Col. Peter Germain,
“One thing I can do is reassure you that British Army and BATSUB take any sort of ammunition or weapon breach of security very seriously and we will investigate thoroughly. Indeed we’ve initiated the Special Investigations Branch in the United Kingdom who deals specifically with military type breaches of security to get involved in this and they have already began their inquiries here in BATSUB and branching out from BATSUB as necessary and indeed back in UK for anyone who might have come through on training opportunities here in Belize with us, who might have been involved with grenades over the last year.

I mentioned earlier that the Special Investigation Branch were looking into all the possibilities of where our breach might have occurred and it might appear that one has obviously because one has appeared on the street and I wouldn’t wish to comment on how it might have gone missing out from the training are and risk comprising anything that those policemen back in UK will be asking the very same units that have been here. This is part of the investigation that will be done in the UK and indeed out here to try and establish where in the line of our procedures that someone might have been able to breach the procedures and offload a grenade.”

Sources tell us that police information suggests that the hand grenade may have gotten to the street through a BDF soldier. But according to the BDF high command, their soldiers do not take part in the live training; they act as opposing forces and use only blank ammunition.

Lt. Col. Peter Germain,
“The BDF are very helpful indeed in improving the training we can do out here by providing us with an opposing force and we also employ some locally employed civilians to assist us, if you like, to provide a sort of civilian population and make the training more realistic and they pretend to villages in certain scenarios or non-governmental organizations or Red Cross people or local policemen and that makes the training just a little bit more realistic. When we employ those people we are not conducting live firing and therefore the grenade in question would not have been available through any routine sources for anyone to get hold of. Clearly the investigation will look into it. I am not ruling out the possibility that a grenade could have fallen out of someone’s pocket or pouch at some stage and then an individual has not owned up to the fact. I am not suggesting that has happened but then that would leave it lying on the ground and someone could pick it up but it is pure speculation on my part and the investigation that I talked about will look into any possibility that may have caused this breach.

A grenade of this nature is an indiscriminate weapon and anybody who chooses to use it, whether in a civilian type environment is really committing an indiscriminate act of cowardice and it shouldn’t be condoned by any group or any people. Again I can reassure you that the checks that we conduct on a weekly basis, on a daily and weekly basis, are far in excess of that the regulations require us to do for us to retain close control of this sort of ammunition. So I am very comfortable that what we have in place here in Ladyville on the ammunition compound is secure. Once we issue it to the units that are training, bearing in mind this is training for war in many cases, and they are issued the ammunition in the field, despite rigorous checks that are still in place to try and keep track of where everything is, there is a lot of it out there and it is more difficult to keep very very close paperwork type scrutiny on where it is.”

And while the British military and police do their own investigation Belize Police have been questioning a number of persons they believe can assist them in their investigation.

As noted in the story, the BDF has disclaimed any involvement. But the investigation now becomes much tighter as there are a few known variables. First, the British know exactly which soldiers participated in those six training sessions in the 13 months since the grenade came into the country. From there, they should be able to narrow down their known local contacts and get a clearer picture of how the grenade may have gotten out.

As for the previous three grenades detonated or detected since June. The first was Czechoslovakian and the second which was handed in, and the third, which was found last week – are said to have been similar. The L109A1 is an offensive grenade designed to kill, as opposed to those found previously which were defensive grenades. Police still have two suspects detained and are seeking two more, but no one has been charged.