Samaroo’s father arrested

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Christo­pher Sama­roo, the fa­ther of po­lice shoot­ing vic­tim Joshua Sama­roo, was de­tained by po­lice of­fi­cers at the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion last evening.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that af­ter go­ing to find out why his home was raid­ed by of­fi­cers from the St Clair sta­tion ear­li­er, Sama­roo was cau­tioned by se­nior of­fi­cers and de­tained in re­la­tion to al­leged state­ments on the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice at­trib­uted to him in the me­dia, which were al­so broad­cast on­line on Sun­day.

At­tor­ney Aaron Lewis last night con­firmed Sama­roo was held un­der Reg­u­la­tion 11 of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions. He said Sama­roo is ex­pect­ed to re­main in cus­tody for at least the next 48 hours.

The se­quence of events that led to Sama­roo's de­ten­tion un­fold­ed hours pri­or when he re­port­ed to the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, to give his side of the sto­ry on the state­ments he made.

“My words were mis­con­strued,” Sama­roo told Guardian Me­dia in re­sponse to claims the state­ments he made dur­ing a ra­dio pro­gramme on Sun­day (Fa­ther’s Day) could be in­ter­pret­ed as sedi­tious.

Sama­roo was asked to ap­pear in a Fa­ther’s Day spe­cial on the Eye on De­pen­den­cy pro­gramme, where he al­leged­ly made the com­ment. Part of the in­ter­view was sub­se­quent­ly pub­lished on a so­cial me­dia page.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day as he emerged from the sta­tion with Lewis, 40 min­utes af­ter speak­ing with se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials, Sama­roo said, “We gave a state­ment. I told them ex­act­ly what hap­pened and that’s it.”

Sama­roo ar­rived at the po­lice sta­tion around 5.35 pm ac­com­pa­nied by Lewis. Be­fore go­ing in­side, Sama­roo said this was done “to take front be­fore front take me,” not­ing that the pub­lished ar­ti­cle on the so­cial me­dia page had mis­rep­re­sent­ed what he ac­tu­al­ly said on the pro­gramme.

Lewis ex­plained that Sama­roo had be­come anx­ious by pub­lic com­men­tary and ad­vice gen­er­at­ed from the pub­lished ar­ti­cle that sug­gest­ed his state­ments could be viewed as sedi­tious, in­cite­ful or pro­vok­ing.

Lewis said his client sur­ren­dered him­self and opt­ed to have an open dis­cus­sion with the po­lice.

Emerg­ing just over half hour lat­er, Lewis com­mend­ed the po­lice of­fi­cers who dealt with them, adding, “They in­di­cat­ed that there was noth­ing, that they were not aware of any­thing against Mr Sama­roo. Mr Sama­roo made a re­port based on his fear as he very fear­ful of what could tran­spire, based on what was pub­lished.”

On whether he was fear­ful of be­ing picked up by the po­lice, Sama­roo said, “For sure, be­cause we are in a State of Emer­gency and that don’t go down good with any­thing you do now.”

While he was not asked to re­peat the con­tro­ver­sial state­ments, Sama­roo stressed that his words were “mis­con­strued.”

He as­sured, “I went and cleared it up with them (po­lice) and that’s it.”

Re­fer­ring to his sta­tion vis­it, he said, “It is bet­ter I come and clear every­thing up be­cause I don’t want to be sleep­ing and braps, they come and buss down my door.”

Asked if his state­ments could be viewed as com­ing from a place of grief and hurt aimed at the po­lice, he said, “It is very dif­fi­cult to be in my shoes right now. ... This is on my mind right through.”

Cog­nisant of just how law en­force­ment was op­er­at­ing dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE), he sur­mised, “You nev­er know...they prob­a­bly home by me all now so, I nev­er know.”

In fact, even while they were at the sta­tion, Lewis said he re­ceived con­fir­ma­tion that po­lice of­fi­cers from the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion had car­ried out a search of his La Sei­va Road, Mar­aval home. It was un­clear up to last night, what of­fi­cers had been search­ing for or if any­thing had been tak­en from Sama­roo’s home.

Af­ter Sama­roo con­clud­ed his busi­ness at the sta­tion, he re­port­ed­ly went to the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion to find out why the po­lice were at his home and was de­tained.

Joshua Sama­roo’s com­mon-law wife, Ka­ia Sealy, who was in­jured dur­ing the Jan­u­ary po­lice-in­volved in­ci­dent and was re­ceiv­ing med­ical and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive care abroad for paral­y­sis, re­turned to the coun­try on June 17. Sealy was ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers as the plane land­ed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and was slapped with eight charges aris­ing out of the shoot­ing. She was grant­ed bail fol­low­ing a vir­tu­al court hear­ing last Wednes­day and re­mains in the care of rel­a­tives.