Opposition MPs foresee lawsuits after SoE

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

The Op­po­si­tion is an­tic­i­pat­ing a wave of law­suits against the State from nu­mer­ous peo­ple de­tained but not charged un­der the cur­rent na­tion­al State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment (MPs) Mar­vin Gon­za­les and Stu­art Young pre­dict that once the SoE con­cludes, de­tainees would not on­ly be re­leased but may al­so re­tal­i­ate by su­ing the State for their ar­rests.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Young ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of dic­ta­tor­ship, call­ing the mea­sures used to de­tain peo­ple dra­con­ian.

Young said, “I ex­pect law­suits. We’re al­ready see­ing cer­tain lawyers chal­lenge it, and right­ly so be­cause the whole pur­pose of it is you said you’re go­ing to hold per­sons, but no charges. Where are the charges that should have come out of it with the in­ves­ti­ga­tions, etc? You can’t just sus­pend peo­ple’s rights.

“The one that had me par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned, and I had warned about it in the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency de­bate, was a so­cial me­dia ac­tivist and an old­er woman ... and the use of the pub­lic or­der pro­vi­sion and the reg­u­la­tions and that’s what they used to de­tain.

“Why would you de­tain some­one who is ex­press­ing her view that we all know is an ex­pres­sion of a view with no means of car­ry­ing out any harm and this type of thing? You lock them up un­der a pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­der? These are dra­con­ian mea­sures that we’re see­ing, and I am con­cerned it’s no longer a spec­u­la­tion about dic­ta­tor­ship, we’re see­ing it come to pass.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Gon­za­les said, “The vast ma­jor­i­ty of the peo­ple were de­tained un­der emer­gency pow­ers; you mark my words, most of them, 95 per cent of them, will be re­leased. I ex­pect law­suits.”

Ear­li­er this week, some lawyers have al­ready come for­ward de­mand­ing the re­lease of their clients when the SoE ends.

Ac­cord­ing to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, well over 100 peo­ple have been de­tained fol­low­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) against them un­der the SoE de­clared on Ju­ly 18.

Yes­ter­day, Young said the num­ber was much high­er.