By CECILY ASSON Friday, August 7 2009

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CHOPPED: British couple Peter and Murium Greene...

FOR THE first time, senior police officers in Tobago raised the possibility that the brutal cutlass attack six days ago on British couple Peter and Murium Greene, may be a hate crime.

According to the Wikipedia Encyclopedia website, a “hate crime” (also known as a bias-motivated crime) occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her perceived membership in a certain social group usually defined by racial group, religion, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, gender identity or political affiliation.

In confirming that two more persons were arrested, bringing to four the number of persons detained for the attack which has left Mr Greene in a medically induced coma and Mrs Greene needing surgery to her jaw, a senior police source speaking on the basis of strict anonymity, said yesterday, “It was an unprovoked attack on this couple. We may very well be looking at a crime of hate.”

The police are leaving no stone unturned in their investigations, so much so, that ace sleuths ASP Johnnie Abraham and Insp Stanley Ramdeen, whose normal line of work is to track down killers and solver murders, have been sent to Tobago to investigate the case.

The police source said that the four detained suspects were yesterday being interrogated at four separate locations in Tobago. In addition, samples of bodily fluid were taken for DNA testing to see if matches can be made of DNA recovered from the crime scene.

On Wednesday, police carried out a search at the Lambeau home of a 24-year-old man who is already in custody.

Peter, 65, and his wife Murium, 59, were chopped about their head and face on Saturday last at their Bacolet vacation home. They are currently being treated at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex (EWMSC) in Mt Hope.

The police’s investigation centres around a brief statement they got from Mrs Greene who said that at about 2 pm, she and her husband were relaxing in the patio. Mrs Greene said that she later fell asleep while reading a book and a chop to her face, woke her up.

Mrs Greene, the police source said, tried to get to a nearby telephone to call the police, when a man ordered her, “in a soft voice, to put down the phone.”

The man, police said, proceeded to cut the telephone line and then went across to Mrs Greene’s husband and started to chop him. The attacker then left.

The only description given to investigators by Mrs Greene was that the attacker was soft spoken, wore a pair of trainers (sneakers) and was “brown skinned”.

“The attack is similar to that of the Swedish couple who were chopped to death last year. It was unprovoked, their attacker/s used cutlasses, nothing was taken. Robbery was not the motive because nothing was taken or demanded. Contrary to what is being said, the truth is that we have very little to go on. The injured woman couldn’t tell us if there was more than one person involved. She only woke up when she was chopped...everything happened fast,” the police source said.

Newsday was told that the suspects in custody may belong to a gang. “The gruesome crimes in Tobago are being committed by the same persons. We know who they are but there is no evidence to pin them to the crime,” the source said.

He told Newsday that several crimes including murder, the recent robbery at a Royal Castle outlet in Tobago and the burning of three motorcars in an attempted payroll heist involved members of the same gang. Investigations are continuing.

According to the Daily Express in the United Kingdom, Tobago real estate agent Jason Wallace, 30, described as a friend on the island of the Greenes, said of them, “They are a sincere and kind couple. And what has transpired upon them not only a robbery but outright evil.”