Star Sabga to spend another weekend in jail

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

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

This is be­cause while Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der lift­ed Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) against Do­minic and Genevieve Hadeed on Thurs­day, the one in re­la­tion to 70-year-old Sab­ga, al­so over an al­leged plot to kill key Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, re­mained in place. 

When Sab­ga’s ap­pli­ca­tion for in­ter­im re­lease came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Vigel Paul yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen, who is rep­re­sent­ing Alexan­der, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, re­quest­ed time to re­spond to lengthy af­fi­davits filed in fur­ther­ance of the ap­pli­ca­tion. 

Re­peat­ed­ly stat­ing that he was not seek­ing to pro­long Sab­ga’s de­ten­tion, Ramdeen ques­tioned why Sab­ga’s le­gal chal­lenge was not pur­sued with the same haste ap­plied to 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 lawyer, 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 con­sid­er sub­mis­sions on the is­sue at 2 pm on Mon­day. 

“I don’t think a cou­ple more days is un­rea­son­able in the cir­cum­stances,” Jus­tice Paul said. 

Through the ap­pli­ca­tion, Sab­ga’s lawyers are call­ing on Jus­tice Paul to re­lease Sab­ga un­der the house ar­rest con­di­tions that were grant­ed by a pan­el of the Court of Ap­peal in re­la­tion to the Hadeeds last week. 

The Hadeeds were not able to ac­cess the in­ter­im re­lief from that rul­ing, as the State ob­tained a stay of the or­der pend­ing a fi­nal ap­peal to the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil from an­oth­er pan­el of the Court of Ap­peal led by Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh. 

Alexan­der’s de­ci­sion to lift the PDOs came hours af­ter the Privy Coun­cil in­di­cat­ed that it could not fa­cil­i­tate the ap­peal over the Hadeeds’ in­ter­im re­lief be­fore it goes on its an­nu­al va­ca­tion pe­ri­od next Fri­day. 

The Privy Coun­cil al­so rec­om­mend­ed that the cou­ple ap­ply for the stay to be lift­ed be­fore the ap­peal comes up for hear­ing in Oc­to­ber. 

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Paul, there was a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion be­tween the trio’s lawyers and those for the State on whether two Court of Ap­peal judges or­dered that their sub­stan­tive case, al­leg­ing that they are be­ing tar­get­ed by the State based on their eth­nic­i­ty, should be ex­pe­dit­ed.  

Ramdeen was care­ful to note that the judges made the or­der af­ter he made a con­ces­sion that was pred­i­cat­ed on the Hadeeds re­main­ing de­tained. He not­ed that it could not ap­ply now, since they were freed by the State on Thurs­day. He al­so point­ed out that an ex­pe­dit­ed hear­ing ap­pli­ca­tion was nev­er made on be­half of Sab­ga. 

Dou­glas Mendes, SC, claimed that Sab­ga’s case could be ex­pe­dit­ed, as she still re­mains un­der de­ten­tion. He al­so promised to file an of­fi­cial ap­pli­ca­tion based on Ramdeen’s ob­jec­tion. He al­so en­cour­aged Jus­tice Paul to con­sid­er a tran­script of the Ap­peal Court hear­ing, in which the two judges ex­pressed con­cerns over Hadeed’s health and rec­om­mend­ed that the case be ex­pe­dit­ed af­ter Ramdeen’s con­ces­sion.  

Jus­tice Paul is ex­pect­ed to con­sid­er the is­sue fur­ther af­ter weigh­ing in on the in­ter­im re­lief on Mon­day. 

The trio was ar­rest­ed late last month based on pur­port­ed in­tel­li­gence gath­ered by the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA). 

The cou­ple’s bid for in­ter­im re­lease was ini­tial­ly blocked by Jus­tice Seep­er­sad, lead­ing to a myr­i­ad of le­gal chal­lenges, in­clud­ing those be­fore Jus­tice Paul. 

The Hadeeds and Sab­ga are al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Faris Al-Rawi, SC, Dhe­men­dra Pun­wasee, Jerome Ra­j­coomar, Chase Pe­gus and Car­lon Mc Leod. 

 Alexan­der, the AG’s Of­fice and the TTPS are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by British King’s Coun­sel Sir James Ead­ie, Dayadai Har­ri­paul and ASP Ram­dath Phillip.