Mixed views from former top cops on Hadeeds’ detentions

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says he is con­cerned that the de­ten­tion of busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed, his wife Genevieve and their rel­a­tive Star Sab­ga will set a prece­dent where po­lice can de­tain some­one with­out just cause, while abus­ing cer­tain emer­gency pow­ers to spite oth­ers.

The Hadeeds were de­tained by po­lice at their Pine Av­enue, Bayshore, West­moor­ings home ear­ly on the morn­ing of June 24, as part of a po­lice en­quiry.

As of yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, po­lice had not con­firmed the na­ture of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Hadeeds. How­ev­er, a me­dia re­port sug­gest­ed that the cou­ple were de­tained as part of a pur­port­ed plot to as­sas­si­nate the Prime Min­is­ter and se­nior mem­bers of Gov­ern­ment.

The Hadeeds and rel­a­tive Star Sab­ga re­mained in cus­tody up to yes­ter­day un­der PDOs.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, Grif­fith de­scribed the de­ten­tions as con­cern­ing, not­ing that the rea­son sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent was vague and warn­ing that ar­rest­ing some­one on the ba­sis of sus­pi­cion alone would af­fect the per­cep­tion of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), while al­low­ing some peo­ple in au­thor­i­ty to vic­timise oth­ers with whom they have per­son­al griev­ances.

“It’s a con­cern that the most fun­da­men­tal right can be lost by one per­son just not lik­ing you, or their blood don’t take you and that per­son now can lose their free­dom on the ba­sis of a Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­der.

“The PDO gives the State the au­thor­i­ty to in­car­cer­ate some­body through­out the pe­ri­od of a State of Emer­gency with­out ev­i­dence to charge, so your most fun­da­men­tal rights have been in­fringed,” he said.

“This could be a min­is­ter who get horn and he says, ‘Look, in­tel­li­gence re­vealed Mr ABC should be in­car­cer­at­ed for a threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty,’ a com­mis­sion­er don’t like how some­body bad-talk­ing them in pub­lic, ‘You see you, I go­ing to lock you up un­der a PDO and just use the words threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty’.”

He added, “Yes­ter­day, it is Do­minic Hadeed and to­mor­row it could be any cit­i­zen in this coun­try and every­one is stay­ing qui­et be­cause they are fear­ful that it could be them.”

Grif­fith al­so said he felt if the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Hadeeds did not lead to a suc­cess­ful con­vic­tion or favourable re­sult for the po­lice, it would re­flect poor­ly on lo­cal law en­force­ment and pos­si­bly open the State to cost­ly le­gal re­dress.

“What is go­ing to hap­pen is that the SoE will con­tin­ue to be seen as an av­enue to ar­rest peo­ple, in­car­cer­ate them in­def­i­nite­ly be­cause of the fail­ure of the law en­force­ment agen­cies to turn in­tel­li­gence in­to ev­i­dence.

“If you don’t have ev­i­dence now to lay charges on the Hadeeds, it means that af­ter the SoE he is go­ing to sue the State,” Grif­fith said.

How­ev­er, re­tired deputy com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Jayson Forde said po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions were gen­er­al­ly guid­ed by valid in­for­ma­tion and could not be ini­ti­at­ed on the ba­sis of per­son­al whims, as process­es were in place to en­sure po­lice ac­tiv­i­ties were held to a cer­tain stan­dard of ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“Any ac­tion that the State is tak­ing through its agen­cies... in this case the po­lice ser­vice, they will have to have some type of in­for­ma­tion or in­tel­li­gence to go af­ter some­body. I ex­pect that,” Forde said.

“I don’t ex­pect that they will wake up in the morn­ing and say we go­ing and pick up you, be­cause you work in the me­dia.

“Hav­ing tak­en some­one up, to go to the court, you have to have ev­i­dence and there’s a pro­ce­dure and de­pend­ing on the mat­ter that you have be­fore­hand, there’s an en­quiry, you take the ev­i­dence to the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and that ev­i­dence is scru­ti­nised, so I imag­ine they will be op­er­at­ing un­der that same prin­ci­ple. It’s not a kan­ga­roo thing where you just take up some­body and bring them be­fore the court.”

Forde al­so dis­agreed with Grif­fith on whether the TTPS’ rep­u­ta­tion could be per­ceived poor­ly if they could not se­cure a con­vic­tion against the Hadeeds, not­ing that of­fi­cers had noth­ing to fear once they con­duct­ed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion pro­fes­sion­al­ly and with due dili­gence.

“When it goes to the court, if the court is not con­vinced the court will make a de­ci­sion and the po­lice ought to ac­cept that de­ci­sion, but the po­lice is not the ar­biter or the per­son who does the re­leas­ing of a charged per­son,” he said.

“If the court dis­miss­es the mat­ter, to me it’s not a wor­ry for the po­lice be­cause you present your case. Pre­sent­ing your case is not a guar­an­tee you’re go­ing to se­cure a con­vic­tion you know? Pre­sent­ing your case means you present what you have and you al­low nat­ur­al jus­tice to pro­ceed and that’s how it’s sup­posed to work.”

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro via What­sApp, seek­ing a re­sponse to re­ports of the charges in­volv­ing the Hadeeds but re­ceived no re­ply up to press time. Ques­tions were al­so sent to De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge and Min­is­ter of Jus­tice De­vesh Ma­haraj but no re­sponse was re­ceived. Guardian Me­dia al­so sent ques­tions to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar via email but she de­clined to com­ment.