Hadeeds request urgent hearing

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Do­minic and Genevieve Hadeed are pur­su­ing every pos­si­ble av­enue avail­able that can lead to their re­lease be­fore Sep­tem­ber.

A day af­ter Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad de­nied their bid to be re­leased from cus­tody, Guardian Me­dia was told that their le­gal team yes­ter­day sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to file a fixed-date con­sti­tu­tion­al claim by to­mor­row in the High Court, whilst si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly mov­ing to se­cure an ur­gent hear­ing be­fore the State of Emer­gency (SoE) Tri­bunal.

The Hadeeds have the op­tion of chal­leng­ing their de­ten­tion yet again by sub­mit­ting an ap­peal to the SoE Tri­bunal, which is head­ed by chair­man David Alexan­der.

How­ev­er, the tri­bunal can on­ly sub­mit their rec­om­men­da­tions to the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and they are not bind­ing, which means they can be ei­ther ac­cept­ed or re­ject­ed by the min­is­ter.

The cou­ple lost their bid to se­cure their free­dom on Tues­day be­fore Jus­tice Seep­er­sad, who re­ject­ed their ap­pli­ca­tion to be re­leased pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of a ju­di­cial re­view law­suit over Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) is­sued against them days af­ter their ar­rest on June 24.

The judge found that the cou­ple’s lawyers, led by Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes, failed to prove ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the PDOs is­sued by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Alexan­der.

Seep­er­sad found that while the Hadeeds claimed that they were nev­er in­formed that they were be­ing held the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions of the SoE, sta­tion di­ary ex­tracts sup­plied by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) showed that they were no­ti­fied of this fact.

Al­though Seep­er­sad reg­is­tered con­cerns re­gard­ing the prison con­di­tions the Hadeeds have had to en­dure, he not­ed that com­pen­sa­tion could be ob­tained through dam­ages if they are even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful in their le­gal chal­lenge.

Seep­er­sad al­so re­ject­ed claims that the min­is­ter should have giv­en the cou­ple an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard be­fore is­su­ing the PDOs.

Seep­er­sad or­dered the Hadeeds to pay the le­gal costs in­curred by the TTPS in de­fend­ing the lit­i­ga­tion, and has trans­ferred their case to an­oth­er judge, based on the fact that he de­liv­ered pre­lim­i­nary find­ings in the mat­ter.

The Hadeeds, along with their 69-year-old rel­a­tive Star Sab­ga, were de­tained af­ter po­lice of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ed search war­rants at their homes and of­fices.

The war­rants in­di­cat­ed the Hadeeds were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mur­der.

Their PDOs, which are yet to be gazetted, will re­main in ef­fect un­til the SoE ex­pires on Sep­tem­ber 17, or soon­er if their at­tor­neys are suc­cess­ful in se­cur­ing their free­dom oth­er­wise.

Apart from Mendes, the cou­ple is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Faris Al-Rawi, SC, Chase Pe­gus and Car­lon McLeod.