Hadeeds detained in alleged conspiracy to murder probe

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed, 52 and his wife, Genevieve Hadeed, 42, have been de­tained as part of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an al­leged con­spir­a­cy to mur­der, ac­cord­ing to search war­rants is­sued in their names and signed by High Court Mas­ter Va­lene Guer­ra-Abra­ham on June 24. How­ev­er, the doc­u­ments do not dis­close the iden­ti­ty of any in­tend­ed vic­tim or vic­tims.

Hours af­ter de­tails of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion emerged, Do­minic Hadeed, Genevieve Hadeed and her aunt, Star Sab­ga, were placed un­der Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) and tak­en in­to cus­tody at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre and the Women’s Prison, re­spec­tive­ly. It was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear for what al­leged of­fence Sab­ga, 69, was held.

The war­rants, ob­tained by Cpl El­don Cal­liste of the Spe­cial Branch, state that the in­dictable of­fence is con­trary to Sec­tion 5(a) of the Of­fences Against the Per­son Act, Chap­ter 11:08.

The in­for­ma­tion was re­leased yes­ter­day when High Court judge Frank Seep­er­sad de­clined to im­me­di­ate­ly grant an ur­gent habeas cor­pus ap­pli­ca­tion filed on be­half of Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve, and in­stead or­dered the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, to ex­plain the le­gal ba­sis on which the cou­ple con­tin­ues to be de­tained. Jus­tice Seep­er­sad de­nied the ex parte ap­pli­ca­tion filed by Se­nior Coun­sel Faris Al-Rawi but di­rect­ed that the ap­pli­ca­tion, sup­port­ing af­fi­davit, and cer­tifi­cate of ur­gency be served on the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice by 4 pm yes­ter­day. The mat­ter has been fixed for a vir­tu­al hear­ing at 9 am to­mor­row. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro was served with the court doc­u­ments yes­ter­day and ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt. Ef­forts to ob­tain a re­sponse from him proved un­suc­cess­ful.

In the mat­ter, the judge al­so ex­press­ly di­rect­ed the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to clar­i­fy whether the ap­pli­cants are be­ing de­tained pur­suant to a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO). The PDOs were lat­er is­sued.

Af­fi­davit de­scribes cock­roach­es, ‘in­hu­mane’ cell con­di­tions

The af­fi­davit filed by Al-Rawi al­leged that both Hadeeds have been sub­ject­ed to de­grad­ing con­di­tions while in po­lice cus­tody.

He said Genevieve Hadeed was held in a cell at the Wood­brook Po­lice Sta­tion mea­sur­ing about eight feet by six feet, with a dirty ter­raz­zo floor, no bed­ding or fur­ni­ture, a hole in the floor used as a toi­let, and no run­ning wa­ter.

The af­fi­davit states the cell smelled strong­ly of fae­ces and urine, had poor ven­ti­la­tion and dim flu­o­res­cent light­ing, while cock­roach­es crawled across the floor. Hadeed’s aunt, Star Sab­ga, was said to have been curled up on the ground in a foetal po­si­tion.

Al-Rawi al­so com­plained that le­gal con­sul­ta­tions with Genevieve Hadeed took place with­in earshot of a po­lice of­fi­cer be­cause the in­ter­view room door re­mained open and had been propped open with a paint buck­et.

The af­fi­davit al­so de­scribes Do­minic Hadeed’s de­ten­tion at the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion.

Al-Rawi claimed Do­minic Hadeed suf­fers from sleep ap­nea and re­quires the use of a CPAP ma­chine every night, while al­so wear­ing an or­thopaedic leg brace. De­spite po­lice be­ing in­formed of those med­ical is­sues, he al­leged Do­minic Hadeed was forced to sleep on a bare con­crete slab with­out ac­cess to elec­tric­i­ty to op­er­ate the CPAP ma­chine, leav­ing him un­able to sleep.

The ap­pli­ca­tion stemmed from the ar­rest of the Hadeeds on June 24 dur­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of search war­rants linked to an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an al­leged con­spir­a­cy to mur­der.

Their ar­rests came sev­er­al days af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar en­dorsed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie’s June 10 warn­ing in Par­lia­ment that no seg­ment of so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing the so-called “one per cent”, was be­yond the reach of the law.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has main­tained that the ex­e­cu­tion of a search war­rant is a stan­dard in­ves­tiga­tive pro­ce­dure and does not con­sti­tute a find­ing of wrong­do­ing.

In his af­fi­davit, Al-Rawi said Genevieve Hadeed con­tact­ed him short­ly af­ter po­lice en­tered the cou­ple’s Bayshore, West­moor­ings home.

She told him of­fi­cers searched the res­i­dence af­ter iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves and in­form­ing the cou­ple they had a war­rant to seize elec­tron­ic de­vices. The af­fi­davit stat­ed that she ob­served sev­er­al of­fi­cers armed with ma­chine guns in­side the house while po­lice seized elec­tron­ic de­vices be­long­ing to the cou­ple and their chil­dren.

Al-Rawi claimed the Hadeeds were on­ly in­formed they were un­der ar­rest af­ter the search­es had al­ready been com­plet­ed.

Po­lice lat­er took the cou­ple to the Spe­cial Branch of­fices at Agra Court be­fore es­cort­ing Do­minic Hadeed to Blue Wa­ters’ Or­ange Grove of­fices, where of­fi­cers searched his of­fice and seized elec­tron­ic de­vices.

When Al-Rawi, Se­nior Coun­sel Gilbert Pe­ter­son and at­tor­ney Car­lon McLeod lat­er met the cou­ple at Agra Court, Do­minic Hadeed hand­ed them copies of the search war­rants to­geth­er with a hand­writ­ten in­ven­to­ry of prop­er­ty seized.

The af­fi­davit al­leged he was in­struct­ed to sign the in­ven­to­ry with­out first be­ing al­lowed to ver­i­fy that the items list­ed matched those dis­played by in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

Among the items list­ed as seized were sev­er­al Ap­ple iPhones, a black Sam­sung M1017 mo­bile phone, an Ap­ple lap­top com­put­er, five iPads, flash dri­ves, hard dri­ves, and oth­er elec­tron­ic stor­age de­vices.

Do­minic Hadeed was lat­er tak­en to Gulf City Mall, where po­lice seized firearms and am­mu­ni­tion law­ful­ly held un­der a Firearm User’s Li­cence and Firearm User’s Em­ploy­ee’s Cer­tifi­cate af­ter be­ing shown re­ceipts con­firm­ing pay­ment of the 2026 li­cens­ing fees.

A cen­tral is­sue in the ap­pli­ca­tion con­cerns the le­gal ba­sis for the Hadeeds’ con­tin­ued de­ten­tion.

Al-Rawi claimed As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent WPC Rawl­ins in­formed him on Thurs­day evening that the ex­ten­sion of the cou­ple’s de­ten­tion had not been ob­tained un­der ei­ther a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der or the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions.

How­ev­er, min­utes lat­er, Genevieve Hadeed pro­duced a writ­ten di­rec­tion is­sued un­der Reg­u­la­tion 13(3) of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, 2026, ex­tend­ing her de­ten­tion for up to sev­en days. Do­minic Hadeed was lat­er served with a sim­i­lar no­tice at the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion.

The af­fi­davit ar­gued the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions can­not law­ful­ly jus­ti­fy the de­ten­tion be­cause the cou­ple was orig­i­nal­ly ar­rest­ed while po­lice ex­e­cut­ed or­di­nary search war­rants re­lat­ing to an al­leged con­spir­a­cy to mur­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

It fur­ther con­tend­ed that con­spir­a­cy to mur­der is not an of­fence un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions and there­fore the reg­u­la­tions can­not sub­se­quent­ly be re­lied up­on to au­tho­rise their con­tin­ued de­ten­tion.

Al-Rawi al­so de­tailed what he claimed were re­peat­ed de­lays in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, stat­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tors first ad­vised they were seek­ing guid­ance from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions be­fore lat­er in­di­cat­ing in­ter­views could not pro­ceed be­cause they were await­ing a re­port from the Cy­ber Crime Unit.

The af­fi­davit stat­ed the le­gal team re­peat­ed­ly ad­vised in­ves­ti­ga­tors that both Do­minic and Genevieve Hadeed re­mained avail­able and will­ing to par­tic­i­pate in in­ter­views.

It al­so re­vealed that Genevieve Hadeed’s el­der­ly aunt, Star Sab­ga, was ar­rest­ed at Re­gents Tow­ers, West­moor­ings, be­fore lat­er be­ing in­ter­viewed by the le­gal team at Agra Court.

Hours af­ter the court pro­ceed­ings, the TTPS an­nounced that in­ves­ti­ga­tors had ob­tained Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders for a 52-year-old busi­ness­man and two busi­ness­women, aged 69 and 42, all of West­moor­ings.

Po­lice said the or­ders were grant­ed pur­suant to the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions and were ex­e­cut­ed in the pres­ence of the de­tainees’ at­tor­neys-at-law.

The TTPS said the three in­di­vid­u­als were as­sist­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tors and had since been trans­ferred in­to the cus­tody of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pris­ons Ser­vice, where they are be­ing held at their des­ig­nat­ed places of de­ten­tion.

As the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the ar­rest of Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve deep­ens, new in­for­ma­tion has sur­faced that the cou­ple was ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the of­fence of con­spir­a­cy to mur­der.

The in­for­ma­tion is con­tained in two search war­rants is­sued in the names of the cou­ple and signed by High Court Mas­ter Va­lene Guer­ra-Abra­ham on June 24. How­ev­er, there is no dis­clo­sure of any in­tend­ed vic­tim (s).

The in­dictable of­fence is con­trary to Sec­tion 5 (a) of the Of­fences Against the Per­son Act, Chap­ter 11:08.

The war­rants were ob­tained by Cpl El­don Cal­liste of the Spe­cial Branch.

A quan­ti­ty of elec­tron­ic de­vices in­clud­ing lap­tops, cell­phones, flash dri­ves, hard dri­ves, portable stor­age de­vices and doc­u­ments were seized from the two sus­pects.

Ac­cord­ing to the war­rant is­sued in the name of Genevieve, two lo­ca­tions at Or­ange Grove Es­tate, Trinci­ty and West­ern Cir­cle, West­moor­ings were searched; while the war­rant for Do­minic list­ed lo­ca­tions at Gold­en Grove Road, Pi­ar­co and Bayshore, West­moor­ings.

It is al­leged the de­vices con­tained ev­i­dence in­clud­ing pho­tographs, record­ings, doc­u­ments, voice notes, videos, au­dio record­ings, CCTV footage, texts, lo­ca­tion da­ta, in­clud­ing GPS, lo­ca­tion his­to­ry, ap­pli­ca­tion da­ta, com­mu­ni­ca­tions da­ta, stored com­mu­ni­ca­tion or stored da­ta in dig­i­tal or elec­tron­ic for­mat.

Copies of the war­rants formed part of the ap­pli­ca­tion by a team of at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the cou­ple, which was filed in the High Court yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Al­so in­clud­ed in the bun­dle was a list of items seized which claimed six Ap­ple Iphones; three lap­tops; sev­en Ipads; two flash dri­ves: one cen­tral pro­cess­ing unit; and one portable stor­age de­vice.

The cou­ple was ar­rest­ed on June 24, and have re­mained in cus­tody ever since.