Six­ty-nine peo­ple rang­ing from the ages of 19 to 70 years have been found locked away in cages at a church lo­cat­ed along the East­ern Main Road in Arou­ca on Wednes­day morn­ing.

These peo­ple both men and women are be­lieved to be vic­tims of “mod­ern day slav­ery” and “hu­man traf­fick­ing” ac­cord­ing to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith who spoke to the Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed’s Lead In­ves­tiga­tive desk Mark Bas­sant ear­li­er on Wednes­day just out­side the Trans­formed Life Min­istry Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre.

“What we be­lieve is that we have cracked what we be­lieve is the biggest hu­man traf­fick­ing ring in the coun­try…some of them said they have been here for years…this is a much big­ger pic­ture and we have to in­ves­ti­gate each and every case…this re­lates to vir­tu­al slav­ery with what we have seen here. Some of them say they have been tor­tured. It is such a big­ger pic­ture with prof­it be­ing made out of this…fam­i­ly mem­bers de­lib­er­ate­ly send­ing their loved ones here and ex­tract­ing the prof­its from the fam­i­lies, ” Grif­fith said.

He de­scribed the scenes as “bar­bar­ic, ” “Per­sons are seen in cages, hand­cuffed…per­sons were be­ing tor­tured. We saw tasers and ba­tons…and again this is a sit­u­a­tion of vir­tu­al mod­ern day slav­ery.”

Dur­ing a sting op­er­a­tion co­or­di­nat­ed by Grif­fith and ex­e­cut­ed by the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tion Re­sponse Team (SORT), the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) res­cued the 69 T&T cit­i­zens (65 men and 4 women). They were all held cap­tive, where most of them were in cages and some hand­cuffs.

The op­er­a­tion com­menced at about 12:15 am on Wednes­day, at the promi­nent church.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS search war­rants were is­sued pur­suant to Sec­tion 13 Chap. 12:10 of the Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Act, af­ter a pe­ri­od of mon­i­tor­ing and in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Grif­fith, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Op­er­a­tions (Ag.) Jayson Forde, the TTPS’s Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit, North­ern Di­vi­sion C.I.D. are al­so on the scene, as­sist­ed by a med­ical unit com­pris­ing of doc­tors, nurs­es and am­bu­lance at­ten­dants from the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, who are al­so con­duct­ing ini­tial on-scene ex­am­i­na­tions of the res­cued na­tion­als.

Six peo­ple were ar­rest­ed at the church, in­clud­ing the Pas­tor.

In an im­me­di­ate de­fense of the church and it’s pas­tor, a com­mit­ted mem­ber claimed “lies.”

Speak­ing on strict anonymi­ty, she said it is a re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion home for peo­ple who want to come out of drug ad­dic­tion.

“It is not hu­man traf­fick­ing. It is a re­hab so the pas­tor have the place gat­ed to pre­vent them from run­ning away. These peo­ple’s par­ents sign con­tracts and agree. They al­so view the places…So why…

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