FORMER national security minister Gary Griffith believes tougher penalties should be considered for people who make bomb threats, including the possibility of treating serious cases under terrorism legislation.Speaking with the Express yesterday, Griffith said the recent series of bomb threats should not be treated solely as a policing matter, arguing that threats involving possible improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have wider national security implications.He said the Government should consider whether existing laws were adequate to deal with people whose threats cause widespread fear, disruption and instability.Griffith said consideration should be given to treating such offences as terrorism where the circumstances warranted such a classification.He also suggested that legislative amendments could be considered to impose severe penalties, including life imprisonment, on people convicted of making threats intended to destabilise the country.Griffith said bomb threats could be deliberately designed to cause instability and therefore required a coordinated response involving the country’s protective and intelligence services.“A situation like that is deliberately designed to try to cause, to destabilise a country,” Griffith said.He said the response should involve all arms of the protective services rather than leaving investigations primarily to the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS).Griffith said the National Operations Centre (NOC), which he said was established during his tenure as National Security Minister following recommendations from the Commission of Enquiry into the attempted coup, was intended to facilitate such coordination.He said the NOC was designed to bring together the Strategic Services Agency (SSA), the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force and various arms of the TTPS.“This is a matter that should have joint collaboration between all arms of intelligence agencies working together,” Griffith said.He criticised what he described as the issue being reduced to police investigations and statements that arrests were imminent.Griffith said the response to bomb threats should involve intelligence agencies and the protective services working together to determine whether the incidents were connected or part of an effort to destabilise the country.“It is only in a backward country that you’re hearing there’s bomb threats, and it’s a police matter, and the police investigating,” he said.Griffith nevertheless expressed confidence that the perpetrators would be identified and brought before the courts.He said that confidence was based on the training and capabilities of personnel across the protective services, not only within the police.“I am very confident that this matter would be dealt with, and those persons will be brought to justice,” Griffith said.He said the possibility of using anti-gang legislation should also be examined where there was evidence that groups were involved in making coordinated threats.Griffith said the law should distinguish between threats treated as ordinary criminal offences and conduct intended to create widespread instability or fear.“What I do hope is that such a situation of a crime should be deemed as terrorism, because it is an act to virtually destabilise the country, and to cause political upheaval,” he said.He called for consideration of legislative amendments to impose stronger penalties on people who make threats capable of causing widespread disruption.Griffith said people who deliberately create such instability should face consequences comparable to those imposed for terrorism.“It is hoped that we can sometimes look towards trying to amend the law, that when people make these kind of foolish threats, that can cause immense instability in a country, and massive fear, that when these persons are apprehended, it should be dealt with as if these persons are terrorists, and should be treated as such, with life imprisonment,” he said.