7 News Belize

Grenade Attack on Home of Comptroller of Customs
posted (March 5, 2009)

Yesterday on Channel 7, for 20 straight hours of broadcasting, it was all about the election. But we interrupted our “The Big Test” election coverage, to tell you about the grenade hurled at the home of the Comptroller of Customs Gregory Gibson. It is the most disturbing attack on a public official in memory; it happened at night, at his home in the quiet residential area of Belama Phase four. Police still aren’t saying much about it, no one has been arrested, and from what our sources tell us, there are no known suspects or any confirmed motive.

Or course, it has to be mentioned, that under Gibson, an unprecedented crackdown on smuggling has been made, most notably of pseudo-ephedrine pills, which are a key basic ingredient in the international drug trade of the drug known as crystal meth which is used in the United States and trans-shipped through Mexico. But then, there’s also been a crackdown on illegal cigarettes, so who’s to say...?

And while the possible motive points in so many disturbing directions, the source of the grenade points to only one – the British Army Training Support Unit, BATSUB. It has been confirmed as a British type grenade – the same used in previous attacks. So what does BATSUB have to say? I went to Ladyville looking for answers.

Jacqueline Godwin,
What was your reaction, ‘oh no not again,’?

Lt. Col. Peter Germain, BATSUB Commander
“That was exactly what it was Jackie. Yes obviously I was frustrated that it was happening again. I was angry and equally disappointed as well. There are some grenades out there. We don’t know exactly how many so there are a number of things we need to do to try to prevent these things from coming out and being used again.”

According to Lt. Peter Germaine, the Commander of the British Army Training Support Unit, the grenade thrown on the third floor of the residence of Gregory Gibson the Comptroller of Custom’s corresponded with the batches of grenades used by numerous British training units in Belize from mid 2006 to mid 2008. In the recent case the lot number from the grenade’s fly off lever recovered from the scene confirmed their suspicions that the grenade did not come from the army’s ammunition compound.

Lt. Col. Peter Germain,
“So which leads us to conclude by all probability that the grenade they found was British and it indeed had come from a BATSUB source.”

Jacqueline Godwin,
When?

Lt. Col. Peter Germain,
“Well we were issued that particular batch in middle of 2006 and the exact figures elude me, I think it was something like 276 and those have been issued to four or five different units over the following two years, up to the middle of 2008 and there are none of that type or batch number left in the ammunition compound now so that also leads me to conclude that we’re back to that scenario that we before where a user unit training from the UK has been issued the grenades and they declare it is expended but somewhere along the line, someone indiscriminate or dishonest, has either lost or not been truthful about that fact or worse, criminally offloaded some of the grenades for personal gain. Now these situations have been investigated by the British Special Investigation Branch for the previous incident and it is like looking for a needle in a haystack with the time that has elapsed, the number of different units, the number of different possible people who could have come into contact whilst these grenades were being thrown and they just have been unable to identify any concrete evidence that can pinpoint any blame, for want of a better word, or culprits that might have been involved in anything illegal.”

Jacqueline Godwin,
Who would have been these people who have been in contact with these grenades?

Lt. Col. Peter Germain,
“Well anyone down to a private soldier who is throwing the grenade and they all have to practice using these grenades in order to enhance the value of the training for them before they deploy into operations.

I can confirm on this particular batch that none of that particular batch was issued by us to anyone in the BDF. That has happened in the past, different batches, but on this one we know that the units issued it were all British.”

Jacqueline Godwin,
Would it be fair for me to assume then that in this Tuesday night incident it was a British soldier who is responsible for having that grenade make it from the training field onto the streets of Belize?

Lt. Col. Peter Germain,
"I think that would be very categoric to say that it was a British soldier. There are civilians who assist the British soldiers when they exercise who may somehow have had access either by familiarity with the person who is running the range, earning their trust and they may have had access to the grenade. I can’t state that categorically. All I am saying is I can’t categorically state that it was a British soldier who removed the grenade from the training area or indeed who might have made the grenade available to someone else who was on the training area. I just can’t state categorically I am afraid Jackie and the police investigation that followed was unable to get any closer to answering that question either. I think now with our revised procedures, we would be in a much better position to try and track where there could have been a problem.

At the end of the day it isn’t a British guy who struck the grenade at the senior official. That doesn’t make the fact that the grenades are missing any the less heinous but at the end of the day, it is not actually a British soldier who is conducting the acts. The grenade only becomes dangerous if someone has malicious intent and it isn’t a British soldier who has the malicious intent to the Belizean official. I apologize most sincerely to the controller of Customs, I don’t actually know him personally. It is an awful thing to happen. The important thing is try and identify if there is anyone out there who knows anything about where people are obtaining grenades from, I’d be as keen as anyone in Belize to be told and given the information. Or if they know anything about the person who might have conducted the attack, it is a cowardly attack. Use of the grenade is an indiscriminate weapon and could harm anyone, not just the intended target and anyone uses it, as I said before, is a coward and people who know people who have these items of equipment and aren’t revealing it to the police need to look into the mirror occasionally and ask themselves whether their doing all they can do.”

The BATSUB Commander confirmed that it was all British made grenades that were used in three of the incidents in Belize City the first at KHMH in September of 2008, the explosion in an open lot on Faber’s Road in November of 2008 and the blast at the Gibson’s residence on Tuesday, March third.

Jacqueline Godwin,
What security measures have been put in place since the first incident was reported?

Lt. Col. Peter Germain,
“I know the Belizean people will be looking incredulous at an organization that they thought was well organized and well disciplined and I’d like to assure them that we are and that we’re not taking failings lightly. There are two things we need to do. We need to prevent anymore grenades going missing and there are two ways we’ve done that so far and secondly, finding those grenades that have gone missing already if we can. So to answer your question exactly, the first thing we’ve done is completely reviewed the procedure for the use of the grenades when they are being used by soldiers out on the training area; and no one was doing anything wrong, they were following the established British procedure that was laid down in our regulations and clearly we’ve discovered that that was not working or didn’t work and had failings in this situation. And so we’ve gone back to the UK authorities with suggestions of ways we can improve it. And we now in Belize operate a stringent method of using these grenades out in the field as in anywhere else that the British Army uses grenades in the world. Kenya is the only other place where we have similar type of training to this and they operate now the same system that we have put in place here with more than duplicate copies of paper work and witness signatures etc. that inevitably reduces the realism of the training but as you know and as I know the most important thing is to make sure that no more grenades get into the wrong hands.

Using the old regulations it is almost impossible to work out who of the hundreds that would have done, might be involved in anything illegal and the new system is much more full proof with much more accountability and rightly so because we can’t allow this kind of thing to happen again.”

Jacqueline Godwin,
But at the same time because we don’t know how many grenades are out there, you can’t put your head on the block to say you will never ever find another British made grenade?

Lt. Col. Peter Germain,
“No I can’t Jackie and I said as much the last time I was interviewed and it is not pretty but it is the reality that we find ourselves in now. And like I said the key thing now is to prevent anymore grenades going missing and trying to find them. BATSUB spent $20,000 on improving the lighting in the compound and this year our hope is that the UK authorities will approve $400,000 to address some security enhancements to the compound itself and that should be spent this financial year I hope. That I hope will go somewhere in improving the security of the ammunition compound and as I said the Belize Defense Force has looked at introducing some closed circuit TV in there and to certainly improve the conditions of the guard force that work in there.

A special research training team in England, primarily military, that was involved in Northern Ireland, during the insurgency there, very successfully searching for military hardware and is now doing similar things in Iraq and Afghanistan and I hope to be able to obtain their services to come out to Belize and work with the police and other agencies as seen fit by the Belizean authorities and run some several courses where they could share ideas and maybe glean information off each other on better ways of doing things. There may be nothing but both the Security Ministry and also Mr. Jeffries who I was speaking to yesterday were keen to follow that up. I am very willing to do anything that would give them a better chance of trying to locate any of these things. But for them it is also looking for a needle in a haystack.”

At this time the Belize City Police have no leads in the case and are still appealing to the general public for any information that can lead them to a suspicious looking white car seen leaving the Belama Phase one area sometime between eight and eight thirty when the grenade exploded. We understand that the Comptroller of Customs Gregory Gibson had arrived home only fifteen minutes before the blast. Gibson’s wife and daughter were at home with him. The grenade is believed to have been thrown from the ground floor of an adjacent property and landed on the third floor of the residence that houses a balcony and a gym. The only damaged sustained were several holes in a concrete wall including an opening believed to be six inches in diameter.

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