NTA leader criticises Court of Appeal’s stay in Hadeed matter

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Nor­man Din­di­al says the Court of Ap­peal’s de­ci­sion to grant a stay in the Hadeed mat­ter rais­es se­ri­ous con­cerns about the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers and the use of pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion or­ders (PDOs) dur­ing the State of Emer­gency. 

In a state­ment fol­low­ing Thurs­day’s rul­ing, which was up­held yes­ter­day, Din­di­al said the State had de­tained the Hadeeds for weeks with­out charge un­der emer­gency pow­ers, be­fore the Court of Ap­peal ruled they should be re­leased un­der strict house ar­rest. 

How­ev­er, in an emer­gency sit­ting late Thurs­day, an­oth­er ap­pel­late pan­el, led by Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh, agreed to stay the ear­li­er rul­ing and up­held that de­ci­sion yes­ter­day, af­ter lawyers for the State made ar­gu­ments on why the Hadeeds should re­main in de­ten­tion un­til the Privy Coun­cil rules on the court’s de­ci­sion to place them un­der house ar­rest.

Din­di­al, though, ar­gued that the stay ef­fec­tive­ly re­versed that Ap­peal Court’s de­ci­sion and cre­at­ed the per­cep­tion that “when the State los­es in court, pro­ce­dure is found to keep its pol­i­cy alive.” 

“That is not the rule of law. That is the rule of con­ve­nience,” Din­di­al said. 

He main­tained that PDOs were nev­er in­tend­ed to re­place crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions or pros­e­cu­tions. 

“If the TTPS and the DPP had ev­i­dence, they would file charges. They have not,” he ar­gued. 

“Charge or re­lease them,” he added. 

Din­di­al al­so claimed the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion risks un­der­min­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ju­di­cia­ry, the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice as in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions. 

He again called on the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led ad­min­is­tra­tion to ei­ther charge the de­tainees or re­lease them. 

“To the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment, this is your mo­ment to prove this is about law, not pol­i­tics. Charge these cit­i­zens or re­lease them,” he charged. 

Ad­dress­ing the ju­di­cia­ry, Din­di­al said the courts must re­main guid­ed by the Con­sti­tu­tion rather than the ex­ec­u­tive. 

“The pub­lic needs to see that our courts an­swer to the Con­sti­tu­tion and not to the ex­ec­u­tive,” he said. 

He warned against al­low­ing emer­gency pow­ers to over­ride court de­ci­sions, say­ing do­ing so could cre­ate a dan­ger­ous prece­dent for de­ten­tion with­out tri­al. 

Mean­while, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der says he is tak­ing a more cau­tious ap­proach to the le­gal pro­ceed­ings in­volv­ing the cou­ple, de­spite pre­vi­ous­ly mak­ing strong pub­lic com­ments about what he de­scribed as “the one per cent” mem­bers of so­ci­ety.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia in Mal­oney yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said he was re­serv­ing his judge­ment fol­low­ing the Court of Ap­peal’s de­ci­sion to or­der the cou­ple’s re­lease from prison un­der strict house ar­rest be­fore stay­ing the mat­ter.

The min­is­ter said he would wait to see how the case un­folds, not­ing that it is be­fore sev­er­al courts and that any pub­lic com­ment from him would not as­sist the ju­di­cial process.