UPDATE: State hires UK barristers in Hadeed case

Two UK bar­ris­ters were ad­mit­ted to prac­tise law in Trinidad and To­ba­go to rep­re­sent the State in pro­ceed­ings in­volv­ing busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve, as the cou­ple con­tin­ues chal­leng­ing their de­ten­tion un­der the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency.

Two Le­gal No­tices pub­lished Tues­day grant Sir James Ray­mond Ead­ie and Mr Robert Stephen Strang el­i­gi­bil­i­ty to ap­pear in the mat­ter.

The Le­gal Pro­fes­sion (El­i­gi­bil­i­ty for Ad­mis­sion) (No. 9) Or­der, 2026 and (No. 10) Or­der, 2026, signed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the Chief Jus­tice, al­low the two bar­ris­ters, both mem­bers of the Ho­n­ourable So­ci­ety of the Mid­dle Tem­ple, to ap­pear in the pro­ceed­ings.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has in­di­cat­ed that the two at­tor­neys were re­tained to rep­re­sent the State in the mat­ter, not the Hadeeds.

Sir James Ead­ie has prac­tised at the Bar of Eng­land and Wales since Ju­ly 1984, while Strang has prac­tised since No­vem­ber 2003.

The or­ders lim­it their ad­mis­sion to CV 2026-02618, Do­minic Hadeed and Genevieve Hadeed v The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, and any re­lat­ed pro­ceed­ings aris­ing from the case.

The ap­point­ments come hours af­ter Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad dis­missed the Hadeeds' ap­pli­ca­tion to be re­leased while they pur­sue a ju­di­cial re­view of the Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders is­sued against them fol­low­ing their ar­rest last week.

The cou­ple is chal­leng­ing their de­ten­tion un­der the State of Emer­gency over an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and re­mains de­tained at the Gold­en Grove Prison in Arou­ca.

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Ed­i­tor's note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this sto­ry in­cor­rect­ly stat­ed that Sir James Ead­ie and Robert Strang were rep­re­sent­ing Do­minic and Genevieve Hadeed. The at­tor­neys were re­tained to rep­re­sent the State in the pro­ceed­ings. The er­ror is re­gret­ted.