Hadeeds granted appeal

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve, have se­cured an ur­gent hear­ing be­fore the Court of Ap­peal next Tues­day, as they seek to over­turn a de­ci­sion by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad re­fus­ing their re­lease from de­ten­tion over an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

The cou­ple was grant­ed the ex­pe­dit­ed hear­ing af­ter their pro­ce­dur­al ap­peal against Jus­tice Seep­er­sad’s rul­ing came up for case man­age­ment be­fore ap­pel­late judge Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of- Spain yes­ter­day.

Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar al­so gave the par­ties the op­tion of fil­ing ad­di­tion­al ev­i­dence and sub­mis­sions ahead of the hear­ing.

The ap­peal date was set less than 24 hours af­ter High Court Judge Vigel Paul re­ject­ed an ap­pli­ca­tion to ex­pe­dite the cou­ple’s sub­stan­tive con­sti­tu­tion­al claim, in which they al­lege they are be­ing tar­get­ed by the Gov­ern­ment be­cause of their eth­nic­i­ty and an on­go­ing dis­pute over the ter­mi­na­tion of leas­es for State land.

The ap­pli­ca­tion be­fore Jus­tice Paul was large­ly based on claims that Hadeed’s health has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly while he and his wife re­main de­tained un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs).

The Hadeeds and rel­a­tive Star Sab­ga, 69, were de­tained more than two weeks ago af­ter po­lice ex­e­cut­ed search war­rants at their home and Trinci­ty busi­ness.

Ac­cord­ing to the war­rants, they were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mur­der based on in­tel­li­gence gath­ered by a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty or­gan­i­sa­tion that was not iden­ti­fied in the PDOs.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad re­fused their ap­pli­ca­tion for in­ter­im re­lease but grant­ed them leave to pur­sue their sub­stan­tive claim. While ac­knowl­edg­ing the prison con­di­tions the cou­ple has en­dured, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said any harm suf­fered could be ad­dressed through an award of dam­ages if they even­tu­al­ly suc­ceed­ed in their le­gal chal­lenge.

In their ap­peal, the cou­ple’s at­tor­neys raised more than a dozen grounds, ar­gu­ing that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad made sev­er­al er­rors in re­fus­ing in­ter­im re­lief.

Among their ar­gu­ments is that the judge was wrong to con­clude that dam­ages would be an ad­e­quate rem­e­dy if they ul­ti­mate­ly suc­ceed­ed in their con­sti­tu­tion­al claim.

“The con­tin­u­ing de­pri­va­tion of lib­er­ty is the par­a­digm of ir­repara­ble harm. Lib­er­ty tak­en can­not af­ter­wards be re­stored. The breach, hav­ing oc­curred, can­not ever be un­done,” the lawyers ar­gued.

They al­so con­tend­ed that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad in­cor­rect­ly re­quired the cou­ple to prove their con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was un­law­ful, when the bur­den in­stead lay on the State and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to jus­ti­fy the le­gal­i­ty of the de­ten­tion.

The at­tor­neys fur­ther ar­gued that the judge failed to prop­er­ly as­sess their al­le­ga­tions of dis­crim­i­na­tion.

“The learned judge erred in law, in his pro­vi­sion­al as­sess­ment of the mer­its, by un­du­ly de­fer­ring to the Min­is­ter, in cir­cum­stances where the ap­pel­lants had ad­duced cred­i­ble and large­ly un­chal­lenged ev­i­dence that demon­strat­ed that, pri­ma fa­cie, the ar­rests, de­ten­tions, and PDOs were pro­cured for an im­prop­er pur­pose and in bad faith,” they stat­ed.

They al­so claimed the judge failed to ad­e­quate­ly con­sid­er ev­i­dence con­cern­ing the con­di­tions un­der which the cou­ple is be­ing held at the Gold­en Grove Prison in Arou­ca.

In their sub­stan­tive con­sti­tu­tion­al claim, which was re­as­signed to Jus­tice Paul af­ter Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ruled on in­ter­im re­lief, the Hadeeds chal­lenge not on­ly their de­ten­tion but the le­gal­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment’s ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE) last month. They con­tend the ex­ten­sion was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al and was in­tend­ed to tar­get mem­bers of the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, a mi­nor­i­ty eth­nic group, as well as Hadeed per­son­al­ly.

Their at­tor­neys ex­ten­sive­ly cit­ed state­ments made by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie dur­ing the par­lia­men­tary de­bate on the SoE ex­ten­sion, in which he re­peat­ed­ly re­ferred to mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty as “the one per cent” and ac­cused them of fi­nanc­ing the now Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and ben­e­fit­ing from State land. The lawyers sug­gest­ed the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s re­marks were di­rect­ed at Hadeed, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the al­le­ga­tions emerged af­ter he pub­licly crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy in March and af­ter Cab­i­net sought to ter­mi­nate leas­es held by his com­pa­ny in May. They al­so ref­er­enced a let­ter from Je­re­mie’s of­fice in­di­cat­ing po­lice were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the grant­i­ng of the leas­es.

The at­tor­neys said the Hadeeds and Sab­ga were ar­rest­ed based on in­tel­li­gence pur­port­ed­ly gath­ered by the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency through in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions, one day af­ter Hadeed threat­ened le­gal ac­tion over the ter­mi­nat­ed leas­es. Main­tain­ing the de­ten­tions were un­rea­son­able and taint­ed by bad faith, the at­tor­neys said the TTPS could have em­ployed less re­stric­tive in­ves­tiga­tive mea­sures if there was cred­i­ble ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing.

The Hadeeds are seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions re­gard­ing the le­gal­i­ty of the SoE ex­ten­sion and their de­ten­tions. They al­so claim their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were breached.

The Hadeeds are rep­re­sent­ed by Dou­glas Mendes, SC, Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Rishi Dass, SC, Faris Al-Rawi, SC, Chase Pe­gus and Car­lon McLeod. The AG’s Of­fice has re­tained British KCs Sir James Ead­ie and Robert Strang to rep­re­sent the State along­side at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen.