Star Sabga to remain in detention

Derek Achong

Star Sab­ga will have to spend an­oth­er week­end in prison be­fore a judge de­ter­mines whether she should be grant­ed in­ter­im re­lease.

While Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der lift­ed the pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion or­ders (PDOs) against Do­minic and Genevieve Hadeed yes­ter­day, the one against the 70-year-old Sab­ga re­mains in place.

When Sab­ga’s ap­pli­ca­tion for in­ter­im re­lease came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Vigel Paul a short while ago, at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen, rep­re­sent­ing Alexan­der, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, re­quest­ed time to re­spond to the lengthy af­fi­davit filed in sup­port of the ap­pli­ca­tion.

Re­peat­ed­ly stat­ing that he was not seek­ing to pro­long Sab­ga’s de­ten­tion, Ramdeen ques­tioned why her le­gal chal­lenge was not pur­sued with the same haste as the Hadeeds’.

“No­body came to this court wor­ry­ing about Star Sab­ga when the Hadeeds were locked up,” Ramdeen said.

“We can’t al­low ex­pe­di­tion to trump the fun­da­men­tal rules of fair­ness,” he added.

Sab­ga’s at­tor­ney, Rishi Dass, SC, chal­lenged the po­si­tion.

“This is a fun­da­men­tal rights case which the Court of Ap­peal has sug­gest­ed should be dealt with ex­treme ur­gency,” Dass said.

“We con­sid­er that there has been sig­nif­i­cant and egre­gious Ex­ec­u­tive over­reach in this case,” he added.

Jus­tice Paul even­tu­al­ly agreed to give the State the week­end to re­spond to the af­fi­davits. He will then hear sub­mis­sions on the is­sue at 2 pm on Mon­day.

Through the ap­pli­ca­tion, Sab­ga’s at­tor­neys are ask­ing Jus­tice Paul to grant her house ar­rest un­der the same con­di­tions or­dered by a pan­el of the Court of Ap­peal for the Hadeeds last week.