Hadeed lawyers question basis for preventative detention

DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve, are ques­tion­ing whether they were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed un­der Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions for the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) be­fore be­ing is­sued with Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) on Sat­ur­day.

The is­sue arose as a habeas cor­pus writ chal­leng­ing the pro­tract­ed de­ten­tion came up for a vir­tu­al hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad a short while ago.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions, Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes, who is lead­ing the cou­ple's le­gal team, claimed that his clients be­lieved they were be­ing sub­ject­ed to a typ­i­cal or "run-of-the-mill" po­lice probe and were not prop­er­ly in­formed that their ex­tend­ed de­ten­tion was un­der the reg­u­la­tions be­fore the PDOs were is­sued.

He ad­mit­ted that they were ini­tial­ly held for 48 hours un­der the reg­u­la­tions but claimed they were not sub­ject­ed to ex­tend­ed de­ten­tion for sev­en days af­ter the ini­tial pe­ri­od end­ed and be­fore the PDOs were is­sued.

While he ac­cept­ed that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) pro­vid­ed sta­tion di­ary ex­tracts pur­port­ed­ly in­di­cat­ing that the cou­ple were prop­er­ly no­ti­fied of the ba­sis of their pe­ri­ods of de­ten­tion since their ar­rest last week, he re­quest­ed time to phys­i­cal­ly in­spect the of­fi­cial records be­fore de­cid­ing on their next course of ac­tion.

"We are con­cerned that an or­di­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tion has now been trans­formed in­to some­thing un­der the reg­u­la­tions so they can be de­tained longer than they nor­mal­ly could," Mendes said.

"We are con­cerned that the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions are not be­ing used in good faith," he added.

At the start of the hear­ing, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ques­tioned whether the case had be­come aca­d­e­m­ic based on the is­suance of the PDOs.

"It seems to be aca­d­e­m­ic mat­ters that touch and con­cern con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues not be­fore me at this time," Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

"I want to en­sure that we do not utilise any more of the court's time than is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary," he added.

De­spite his reser­va­tions, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad grant­ed an ad­journ­ment un­til 10 am to­mor­row to give the cou­ple's le­gal team an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­spect the records ref­er­enced by the TTPS.

The Hadeeds and a 69-year-old rel­a­tive, Star Sab­ga, were de­tained last week as po­lice of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ed search war­rants at their homes and of­fices.

The war­rants in­di­cat­ed that they were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mur­der.

The PDOs, signed by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, stat­ed that they were be­ing de­tained over an al­leged plot to mur­der Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and MPs.

The probe al­leged­ly stemmed from in­tel­li­gence gath­ered by an un­named na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty en­ti­ty.