FIVE soldiers are under arrest and facing court martial for two separate incidents of the theft of high-powered rifles that have left senior officers concerned about security and accountability at the army's Up Park Camp headquarters in Kingston.

The Jamaica Defence Force's (JDF's) public affairs officer, Captain Charlene Robinson-Steer, confirmed the incidents, including one last Saturday, in which a soldier allegedly used a fictitious name and regimental number to sign out a rifle. He was among a group of four held in connection with the theft.

In an earlier case in July, a member of the Reserves apparently smuggled a disassembled Self Loading Rifle (SLR) out of Up Park Camp.

In the most recent case, the soldiers were ostensibly using the weapon for training, after which it went missing.

"At the end of training, a soldier and a weapon were discovered missing," Robinson-Steer told the Observer. "So we launched a search, accompanied by the police and the weapon was recovered."

Robinson-Steer declined to say whether the soldiers were members of the Military Band or if the gun was found at a soldier's home. "All this the investigations will determine," she said.

A senior army officer, who declined to be identified, said the frequent incidents of soldiers stealing guns was a matter of serious concern for the army and posed deep questions about security and systems.

"We take this very seriously...," he said. "We are really concerned about the laxity in our security and the frequency of soldiers (stealing) guns out of Camp."

According to Observer sources, in Saturday's incident, four privates went to the Up Park Camp armoury and requested an M16 rifle to be used for "training and familiarisation purposes". One of the soldiers used a fictitious name and a bogus regimental number to sign for the weapon.

According to the sources, the soldier hid the gun in his weekend bag. The four privates subsequently left Up Park Camp and one took the weapon to his home at Spanish Town, St Catherine.

During an arms store check that evening, it was noticed that the gun was missing and the fictitious name, signature and regimental number were seen in the weapons register.

Military police and military intelligence officers, accompanied by civil police searched the soldier's Spanish Town home and recovered the weapon, the sources said.

The four soldiers were arrested and are now in the stockade at Up Park Camp awaiting court martial.

In the earlier incident, a platoon of JDF Reserve soldiers was summoned to Up Park Camp for residential duty. Each soldier was issued with an SLR rifle and 32 rounds of ammunition.

Military sources told the Observer that one of the part-time soldiers disassembled his gun, placed it in his bag, donned his civilian clothes, casually left Up Park Camp through the main gate and boarded public transportation with the weapon. He went to his home in Spanish Town.

"In the case of the reserve soldier, he is still under military arrest and the matter is being processed for his discharge from the JDF," Robinson-Steer said.

Observer sources say that the reserve soldier used the stolen weapon for the single-handed round-up of a group of men who had attacked his mother and held up his grandmother at their home. He took the men at gunpoint to the Spanish Town Police Station, declared himself to be a soldier and demanded the arrest of the men.

The police, the sources say, did not believe the story, relieved the reservist of the weapon, then checked the story with the JDF.

The soldier was then arrested by military police and taken back to Up Park Camp where he remains in jail to face court martial charges for gun smuggling.

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