Hadeeds’ arrests shine light on emergency powers, constitutional safeguards

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

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The High Court chal­lenge over the de­ten­tion of busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed, his wife Genevieve and rel­a­tive Star Sab­ga is shin­ing a spot­light on one of the most ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers avail­able to po­lice dur­ing a State of Emer­gency—the abil­i­ty to de­tain peo­ple with­out charge.

While the court will ul­ti­mate­ly de­ter­mine the le­gal­i­ty of the ap­pli­cants’ con­tin­ued de­ten­tion to­day when the mat­ter goes be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad, the case has raised broad­er ques­tions about the le­gal frame­work gov­ern­ing emer­gency de­ten­tion, the con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guards that re­main in place and the cir­cum­stances un­der which the State may law­ful­ly re­strict a per­son’s lib­er­ty.

The Hadeeds were ar­rest­ed on June 24 af­ter the ex­e­cu­tion of search war­rants linked to an al­le­ga­tion of con­spir­a­cy to mur­der at their West­moor­ings home and Trinci­ty busi­ness and have re­mained in cus­tody with­out charge. Their le­gal team has chal­lenged the ba­sis of their con­tin­ued de­ten­tion, con­tend­ing that emer­gency pow­ers were on­ly lat­er in­voked to ex­tend cus­tody.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad has or­dered Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro to clar­i­fy dur­ing a sit­ting to­day whether a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) is be­ing re­lied up­on.

Sev­er­al se­nior at­tor­neys and busi­ness lead­ers con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day de­clined to com­ment, tak­ing a cau­tious ap­proach be­cause the mat­ter is be­fore the courts. The Law As­so­ci­a­tion was al­so sent ques­tions but had not re­spond­ed up to press time.

How­ev­er, South­ern As­sem­bly of Lawyers pres­i­dent Saira Lakhan said the le­gal thresh­old for de­ten­tion de­pends on the pow­er be­ing ex­er­cised.

“Un­der the or­di­nary crim­i­nal law, the po­lice must have rea­son­able sus­pi­cion that the per­son has com­mit­ted, is com­mit­ting, or is about to com­mit a crim­i­nal of­fence. Con­tin­ued de­ten­tion with­out charge is sub­ject to statu­to­ry time lim­its and con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions,” she said.

How­ev­er, she ex­plained that po­lice are grant­ed broad­er pow­ers un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions dur­ing a state of emer­gency.

“Dur­ing a state of emer­gency, Reg­u­la­tion 13 (or Reg­u­la­tion 14 in ear­li­er Reg­u­la­tions, de­pend­ing on the ap­plic­a­ble Le­gal No­tice) ex­pands those pow­ers. A po­lice of­fi­cer may ar­rest with­out a war­rant where the of­fi­cer rea­son­ably sus­pects that a per­son has act­ed, is act­ing, or is about to act in a man­ner prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty or pub­lic or­der, or has com­mit­ted or is about to com­mit an of­fence un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions.”

She con­tin­ued: “Al­though the thresh­old re­mains one of rea­son­able sus­pi­cion, it is di­rect­ed to­wards pro­tect­ing pub­lic safe­ty rather than in­ves­ti­gat­ing com­plet­ed crim­i­nal of­fences.”

Lakhan said it was al­so im­por­tant to dis­tin­guish among or­di­nary crim­i­nal de­ten­tion, de­ten­tion un­der Reg­u­la­tion 13 and a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO), not­ing that they are “legal­ly dis­tinct forms of de­ten­tion.”

“In sim­ple terms, or­di­nary de­ten­tion is about in­ves­ti­gat­ing a sus­pect­ed crime. Reg­u­la­tion 13 de­ten­tion is about al­low­ing the po­lice to act quick­ly to pre­vent an im­me­di­ate threat to pub­lic safe­ty dur­ing a state of emer­gency. A Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der is an ex­cep­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive mea­sure used to pre­vent fu­ture threats where con­tin­ued de­ten­tion is con­sid­ered nec­es­sary,” Lakhan said.

She said or­di­nary crim­i­nal de­ten­tion is in­ves­tiga­tive and “usu­al­ly cul­mi­nates in the sus­pect ei­ther be­ing charged or re­leased.”

By con­trast, Reg­u­la­tion 13 de­ten­tion “ex­ists be­cause Par­lia­ment has tem­porar­i­ly au­tho­rised broad­er ex­ec­u­tive pow­ers dur­ing the emer­gency.”

On PDOs, Lakhan said: “A PDO is not based on in­ves­ti­gat­ing a com­plet­ed of­fence. In­stead, the min­is­ter forms the opin­ion that de­ten­tion is nec­es­sary to pre­vent con­duct prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty. Un­like po­lice de­ten­tion, it is an ex­ec­u­tive de­ci­sion rather than an in­ves­tiga­tive one. The Con­sti­tu­tion specif­i­cal­ly recog­nis­es this ex­cep­tion­al pow­er dur­ing a valid state of emer­gency, but al­so cre­ates re­view mech­a­nisms be­cause of its ex­tra­or­di­nary na­ture.”

De­spite the ex­pand­ed ex­ec­u­tive pow­ers avail­able dur­ing a state of emer­gency, Lakhan said con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guards con­tin­ue to ap­ply.

“Al­though emer­gency pow­ers sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­pand ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­i­ty, they do not elim­i­nate the rule of law.”

She said the safe­guards in­clude “ob­jec­tive rea­son­able sus­pi­cion, rather than un­fet­tered dis­cre­tion,” con­sti­tu­tion­al re­view, par­lia­men­tary over­sight, re­view tri­bunals for per­sons de­tained un­der pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion, ac­cess to le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion and the re­quire­ment that emer­gency pow­ers be ex­er­cised on­ly for the pur­pos­es au­tho­rised by the reg­u­la­tions.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, while rights are cur­tailed dur­ing an emer­gency, ex­ec­u­tive ac­tion re­mains re­view­able,” she said.

Lakhan ex­plained that a habeas cor­pus is the clas­sic rem­e­dy where a per­son is de­tained in ex­cess of 72 hours with­out be­ing charged. Its pur­pose is to re­quire the de­tain­ing au­thor­i­ty to jus­ti­fy the le­gal­i­ty of the de­ten­tion be­fore the High Court.

She not­ed that while the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions re­strict the avail­abil­i­ty of a habeas cor­pus for per­sons law­ful­ly de­tained un­der the SoE regime, the rem­e­dy “may still be ap­pro­pri­ate where:

The de­ten­tion falls out­side the reg­u­la­tions, the statu­to­ry pre­con­di­tions have not been met, the wrong le­gal pow­er has been in­voked, de­ten­tion con­tin­ues af­ter the le­gal au­thor­i­ty has ex­pired, or there is un­cer­tain­ty as to whether the de­ten­tion is un­der a PDO or mere­ly po­lice de­ten­tion.”

On the bal­ance be­tween emer­gency pow­ers and con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, Lakhan said the Con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides the frame­work. Fun­da­men­tal rights un­der sec­tions 4 and 5 are not abol­ished dur­ing a SoEE. Rather, sec­tions 7–12 per­mit tem­po­rary dero­ga­tions that are rea­son­ably jus­ti­fi­able for ad­dress­ing the emer­gency.

She said emer­gency pow­ers at present sat­is­fy the prin­ci­ples of:

Le­gal­i­ty — ex­er­cised on­ly un­der law­ful au­thor­i­ty.

Ne­ces­si­ty — used on­ly where gen­uine­ly re­quired to ad­dress the emer­gency.

Pro­por­tion­al­i­ty — re­stric­tions should go no fur­ther than nec­es­sary.

Ac­count­abil­i­ty — sub­ject to par­lia­men­tary and ju­di­cial over­sight.

Lakhan said courts gen­er­al­ly recog­nise “that gov­ern­ments re­quire greater flex­i­bil­i­ty dur­ing gen­uine emer­gen­cies in­volv­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty or wide­spread vi­o­lence.”