CENTRAL BUSINESSMAN CHALLENGES DETENTION

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A busi­ness­man from cen­tral Trinidad, sus­pect­ed of op­er­at­ing a broth­el and en­gag­ing in hu­man traf­fick­ing, has been grant­ed per­mis­sion to pur­sue a law­suit over be­ing de­tained un­der a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) for the past three months.

Last week, High Court Judge Christo­pher Sieuc­hand grant­ed Lloyd Sealey leave to pur­sue a ju­di­cial re­view case over re­main­ing on the PDO even af­ter a re­view tri­bunal rec­om­mend­ed his re­lease.

Sealy’s chal­lenge of the PDO was one of five last week, with the high-pro­file case in­volv­ing Do­minic and Genevieve Hadeed al­so fea­tur­ing in the High Court.

Ac­cord­ing to his court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Sealey was ar­rest­ed at The Man­sion Night­club, which he al­leged­ly op­er­ates at Mar­shall Trace, Munroe Road, Cunu­pia.

His lawyer, Keron Ramkhal­whan, of Ju­risX Cham­bers, claimed Sealey was in­formed that he was be­ing held based on an in­ves­ti­ga­tion un­der the Dan­ger­ous Drugs Act and the Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Act.

His de­ten­tion was ex­tend­ed un­der the pro­vi­sions of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions (EPR) for the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) and he was even­tu­al­ly is­sued with a PDO by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der.

The PDO stat­ed that Sealey was iden­ti­fied by con­fi­den­tial in­tel­li­gence and sus­pect­ed of op­er­at­ing the night­club as a base for an or­gan­ised crime group/gang en­gaged in hu­man traf­fick­ing and the com­mer­cial sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion of for­eign na­tion­als.

“In­tel­li­gence in­di­cates that the de­tainee over­sees a struc­tured net­work that en­gages in vi­o­lent crim­i­nal acts and re­cruits, har­bours, and re­dis­trib­utes vic­tims while laun­der­ing il­lic­it pro­ceeds,” the PDO said.

Sev­er­al weeks lat­er, Sealey ap­plied for a re­view be­fore the tri­bunal un­der the EPR and Alexan­der pro­vid­ed some ad­di­tion­al par­tic­u­lars re­lat­ed to his de­ci­sion to is­sue the PDO.

Un­der the EPR, the tri­bunal has no pow­er to com­pel the min­is­ter to re­verse his de­ci­sion and can on­ly pro­vide rec­om­men­da­tions.

Alexan­der not­ed that when of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit (SIU) ex­e­cut­ed search war­rants at the busi­ness and ar­rest­ed Sealey, 47 fe­male for­eign na­tion­als and a quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na and co­caine were al­leged­ly found.

“Of­fi­cers al­so ob­served nu­mer­ous women en­gaged in ac­tiv­i­ties con­sis­tent with com­mer­cial sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion, cor­rob­o­rat­ing the in­tel­li­gence re­gard­ing the na­ture of the en­ter­prise,” Alexan­der said.

“The premis­es com­prise mul­ti­ple build­ings, serv­ing dis­tinct op­er­a­tional pur­pos­es, in­clud­ing a build­ing used as a broth­el, ac­com­mo­da­tion for traf­ficked for­eign na­tion­als, and ad­di­tion­al quar­ters used for as­so­ci­at­ed ac­tiv­i­ties,” he added.

On May 7, the tri­bunal in­di­cat­ed that it was of the opin­ion that there was in­suf­fi­cient cause for the de­tainee’s de­ten­tion and that his con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was not nec­es­sary or ex­pe­di­ent in the pub­lic in­ter­est.

Re­spond­ing to the rec­om­men­da­tions, Alexan­der ex­plained that he re­ject­ed such ar­gu­ment be­cause he was not af­ford­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make sub­mis­sions be­fore the tri­bunal.

The min­is­ter stat­ed that he con­clud­ed Sealey’s re­lease would pose an on­go­ing risk to pub­lic safe­ty and his con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was nec­es­sary to en­sure the op­er­a­tions of the or­gan­ised crime group al­leged­ly con­nect­ed to it re­main dis­rupt­ed.

“The re­port con­tains no sub­stan­tive rea­son­ing ca­pa­ble of dis­plac­ing the min­is­ter’s in­de­pen­dent sat­is­fac­tion based on the in­for­ma­tion and in­tel­li­gence pro­vid­ed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS),” Alexan­der ar­gued.

In the law­suit, Ramkhal­whan claimed that Alexan­der act­ed un­law­ful­ly in is­su­ing the PDO with­out any ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing that could cause Sealey to be charged with crim­i­nal of­fences.

“The de­ci­sion to is­sue the PDO was is­sued in cir­cum­stances which sug­gest all crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­tend­ed ap­pli­cant/ap­pli­cant were com­plet­ed,” Ramkhal­whan said.

He al­so al­leged that Alexan­der did not prop­er­ly con­sid­er the tri­bunal’s rec­om­men­da­tions be­fore re­ject­ing them.

“The ap­pli­cant sub­mits that the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty act­ed un­fair­ly and in breach of the le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion of the Ap­pli­cant by fail­ing to con­sid­er the re­port and rec­om­men­da­tions of the Re­view Tri­bunal,” he said.

Through the law­suit, Sealey is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions and an or­der quash­ing the PDO and di­rect­ing his im­me­di­ate re­lease.

In grant­i­ng leave to pur­sue the claim, Jus­tice Sieuc­hand gave di­rec­tions for its fil­ing and ser­vice. He will pre­side over a case man­age­ment con­fer­ence on Ju­ly 31.

Sealey is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by An­war Ho­sein.

Five peo­ple cur­rent­ly de­tained un­der PDOs in the on­go­ing SoE filed ac­tion against the State last week.

Busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve Hadeed took their mat­ter to the Ap­peal Court, af­ter High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad’s re­fusal to or­der their re­lease from de­ten­tion over an al­leged plot to kill key Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. That mat­ter comes up for hear­ing to­mor­row.

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Ra­jaee Ali and Earl Richards al­so wrote to Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der last week chal­leng­ing the State’s con­tin­ued de­ten­tion of them at Teteron Bar­racks, Ch­aguara­mas.

In a let­ter dis­patched to Alexan­der on Ju­ly 8, the lawyers pe­ti­tioned Alexan­der to re­con­sid­er the con­tin­ued ne­ces­si­ty and pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of the PDOs against the men and their de­ten­tion at Teteron Bar­racks.

They al­so called on the min­is­ter to ex­plain the ba­sis up­on which the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion of the duo re­mains jus­ti­fied, hav­ing re­gard to their sta­tus as un­con­vict­ed per­sons and the con­sti­tu­tion­al pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence.

Ali and Richards were re­mand­ed in 2015 while await­ing tri­al in re­la­tion to the in­dict­ment aris­ing out of the mur­der of Dana See­ta­hal, SC. They were trans­ferred to Teteron Bar­racks af­ter be­ing clas­si­fied as “dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals,” de­spite what their at­tor­neys ar­gued was a lack of statu­to­ry sup­port for that po­si­tion.