ALEXANDER DEFENDS HADEEDS’ ARRESTS

PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­[email protected]

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has de­fend­ed the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s de­ten­tion of Blue Wa­ters own­er Do­minic Hadeed, his wife Genevieve Hadeed and her aunt Star Sab­ga, say­ing in­tel­li­gence and not po­lit­i­cal mo­tive led to the is­suance of Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders for the trio.

“This is not a po­lit­i­cal thing. It’s not a po­lit­i­cal thing. I don’t know why peo­ple think it, and I am some­what em­bar­rassed by that. Why per­sons would think such a thing,” Alexan­der said yes­ter­day.

“Let me say again one more time, no Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter (can) in­struct any­one to take out a PDO for any­body. It doesn’t work like that, and if that’s your in­for­ma­tion, you were high­ly mis­led.”

Alexan­der made the com­ment af­ter he was ques­tioned on the is­sue, af­ter a me­dia re­port re­vealed the PDOs is­sued for the Hadeeds and Sab­ga stat­ed their de­ten­tions were re­lat­ed to an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an al­leged con­spir­a­cy to mur­der, in­clud­ing an as­sas­si­na­tion plot against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

How­ev­er, Alexan­der was cau­tious about ad­dress­ing those claims.

“What I can share with you at this time, be­cause again the po­lice needs to do their job, and I am one of the per­sons who ad­vo­cate that the po­lice must be able to do their job, and in or­der to do their job ef­fec­tive­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly, they must be giv­en that op­tion, that op­por­tu­ni­ty, to do that with­out all of this cross talk and the court of pub­lic opin­ion mak­ing state­ments. No, do your job, and let’s see where it goes from there,” he said fol­low­ing a grad­u­a­tion ex­er­cise for a hair­dress­ing course at the Roslyn Hall & Lounge in his Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy.

“All I can say is that the po­lice are pur­su­ing a par­tic­u­lar type of in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and we await the out­come.”

How­ev­er, he did ad­dress the pub­lic com­men­tary on the mat­ter.

“As I said be­fore and I said ear­li­er, the court of pub­lic opin­ion and the so­cial me­dia in­flu­encers who are mak­ing all these state­ments - I was tak­en back even by the pro­nounce­ments made by the Op­po­si­tion - the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions holds an of­fice in T&T sec­ond to none, and he to the best of my knowl­edge is very metic­u­lous in how he does things.”

He added, “Re­spect the rule of law. If you start it at home as a par­ent, you will see your sons and daugh­ters grow­ing up re­spect­ing the rule of law. When you are pulled away from that type of re­spect for au­thor­i­ty, then what do you ex­pect to hap­pen in the streets? What you en­cour­age is what you will get at the end of the day.”

When asked about re­ports that the PDOs for these in­di­vid­u­als had lacked the de­tail typ­i­cal­ly seen, Alexan­der said he did not know what ver­sion had been pre­sent­ed to the me­dia, as his of­fice does not dis­trib­ute those doc­u­ments.

How­ev­er, he said the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed through the of­fi­cial process is a “le­gal foot­print” that pro­vid­ed enough in­for­ma­tion to jus­ti­fy the de­ten­tions.

“First of all, PDOs are not is­sued by the Gov­ern­ment or on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, it’s an in­ves­ti­ga­tion that takes place by dif­fer­ent agen­cies, in­tel­li­gence agen­cies, and from there the in­for­ma­tion is gath­ered, and there’s a se­ries of things, you know, it goes to the in­tel­li­gence, comes to the le­gal of­fi­cers at the TTPS, the le­gal of­fi­cers now will send it to an out­side le­gal agency, that le­gal agency will send it to a le­gal source from the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, and then it comes to my desk. I look at it with the in­for­ma­tion that is on it, and I place my sig­na­ture and hand it back to the po­lice. So, this is not a Gov­ern­ment thing, this is an in­tel­li­gence thing,” he said.

He al­so de­nied that there was an over-re­liance on the use of PDOs by the po­lice dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency.

“If you un­der­stand what is a Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­der, un­der­line the word pre­ven­ta­tive. If I know some­thing is about to hap­pen to you, and I can pre­vent it, should I? Yes, I should. And that is what this is about. Now, what peo­ple don’t un­der­stand too is this. I don’t know if I’m say­ing too much here when we speak to thread, some­thing in Par­lia­ment and Sen­ate and all these things, ob­vi­ous­ly those who in­tend to com­mit such an act will change and try to come dif­fer­ent­ly, so that is why the nar­ra­tive con­tin­ues to change with re­spect to threats. Be­cause if I know you’re wait­ing for me, there would I pass? And this is what I just try to ex­plain to per­sons.”

When asked about the state of con­di­tions where the de­tained busi­ness­man and his rel­a­tives are be­ing held, Alexan­der blamed the poor con­di­tions of de­ten­tion fa­cil­i­ties to a lack of fund­ing and the fail­ures of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

This is the third time al­le­ga­tions sur­round­ing death threats to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her Gov­ern­ment mem­bers have sur­faced dur­ing a State of Emer­gency:

2011 SoE

In No­vem­ber 2011, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that in­tel­li­gence forces had foiled a ma­jor as­sas­si­na­tion plot tar­get­ing her and three of her Cab­i­net min­is­ters.

Over 8,000 peo­ple were held dur­ing that State of Emer­gency, ac­cord­ing to a re­port read in Par­lia­ment by for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter John Sandy, but on­ly 13 per cent of the peo­ple ar­rest­ed dur­ing the SoE be­tween Au­gust 21 and De­cem­ber 5, 2011 were con­vict­ed.

Six­teen peo­ple de­tained to­wards the end of that SoE in con­nec­tion with a plot to desta­bilise the coun­try and as­sas­si­nate the Prime Min­is­ter and three Cab­i­net Min­is­ter were nev­er charged and sub­se­quent­ly re­leased.

2025 SoE

In Au­gust 2025, the Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar said sev­er­al of her Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters had re­ceived death threats. Those threats and oth­ers linked to the ac­tiv­i­ty of crim­i­nal el­e­ment high­light­ed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice be­hind prison walls led to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of an SoE.

2026 SoE

March 2026: A re­newed surge in vi­o­lent gang-re­lat­ed crime, in­clud­ing shoot­ings and reprisals, and planned vi­o­lent acts and reprisals by crim­i­nal net­works against po­lice, prison of­fi­cers, and mem­bers of the le­gal/se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices led to the the im­ple­men­ta­tion of an­oth­er SoE.