Ex-soccer chief uses troops on Trinidad protest

Former FIFA Vice President Jack Warner has called in troops and riot police to remove a protest camp built by environmentalists in his first move as national security minister.

Dozens of soldiers and police razed the three-month-old camp built to protest construction of a highway critics say will damage a watershed.

Warner is defending Wednesday's action and says he has the support of Works Minister Emmanuel George.

But former attorney general Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj says Warner violated Trinidad's constitution because police and army officers are not supposed to take orders from a minister.

Warner oversaw the main soccer body for North America and the Caribbean for almost three decades before resigning last year from FIFA, soccer's international governing body, to avoid investigation following a bribery scandal. He denies wrongdoing.