Al-Rawi: PNM will challenge any attempt to extend new SoE

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor and for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi has warned that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) will mount a le­gal chal­lenge against any at­tempt by the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment an­oth­er State of Emer­gency (SoE) once the cur­rent one ex­pires next week.

Al-Rawi made the state­ment dur­ing an Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day. He spoke af­ter re­veal­ing that his client, Star Sab­ga, was among those re­leased from house ar­rest fol­low­ing the re­vo­ca­tion of her Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO).

Ac­cord­ing to Al-Rawi, the re­vo­ca­tion or­der was re­ceived short­ly be­fore a sched­uled Court of Ap­peal hear­ing in re­la­tion to the mat­ter.

Sab­ga was de­tained on June 25, a day af­ter busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve Hadeed, were de­tained in con­nec­tion with an al­leged plot to kill Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and oth­er se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

Af­ter spend­ing just over a month at the Women’s Prison in Gold­en Grove, Arou­ca, Sab­ga was re­leased from cus­tody in Ju­ly and placed un­der house ar­rest.

The PDOs is­sued against the Hadeeds were al­so sub­se­quent­ly re­voked by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der.

How­ev­er, Al-Rawi used yes­ter­day’s brief­ing to raise broad­er con­cerns about the State of Emer­gency and its im­pend­ing ex­pi­ra­tion. He ar­gued that the SoE ex­pires at mid­night on Sep­tem­ber 15, not Sep­tem­ber 17, cit­ing what he said was the Court of Ap­peal’s recog­ni­tion of Sep­tem­ber 15 as the ex­piry date.

Ac­cord­ing to Al-Rawi, while the Con­sti­tu­tion per­mits an ex­ten­sion of a State of Emer­gency, such a move would re­quire res­o­lu­tions sup­port­ed by a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty in both the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate be­fore the cur­rent de­c­la­ra­tion ex­pires.

He not­ed that Par­lia­ment is sched­uled to sit to­day and sug­gest­ed the Gov­ern­ment could seek to waive the re­quired no­tice pe­ri­od to in­tro­duce mo­tions aimed at ex­tend­ing the SoE.

How­ev­er, Al-Rawi warned that the PNM would chal­lenge any at­tempt to by­pass con­sti­tu­tion­al re­quire­ments.

“We will chal­lenge any at­tempt to ex­tend the state of emer­gency by trick,” he said, re­fer­ring to a sce­nario in which the cur­rent SoE is al­lowed to lapse briefly be­fore a new one is de­clared.

He cau­tioned that any ef­fort to sus­pend the SoE for “a day, a week, or 48 hours” be­fore im­pos­ing an­oth­er would trig­ger le­gal ac­tion.

“We’re just warn­ing the Gov­ern­ment that that will not be tol­er­at­ed,” Al-Rawi said.

The for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al al­so ref­er­enced a re­cent Court of Ap­peal rul­ing in Be­lize, which he said found that back-to-back States of Emer­gency were un­con­sti­tu­tion­al and that such mea­sures must sat­is­fy a test of rea­son­able­ness.

He said the rul­ing should serve as a warn­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go in light of the Gov­ern­ment’s suc­ces­sive States of Emer­gency.

While main­tain­ing that the PNM sup­ports the use of a State of Emer­gency when cir­cum­stances war­rant it, Al-Rawi ar­gued that re­peat­ed de­c­la­ra­tions do not nec­es­sar­i­ly meet con­sti­tu­tion­al stan­dards. He al­so ques­tioned the ba­sis on which many PDOs were is­sued and lat­er re­voked, not­ing that more than 600 peo­ple re­main in pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion, al­though the State be­gan the sched­uled re­lease of some de­tainees yes­ter­day.

Al-Rawi said the end of the SoE would re­quire the pro­cess­ing and re­lease of de­tainees, with re­vo­ca­tion or­ders need­ing to be signed by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der and processed by prison au­thor­i­ties.

He ques­tioned why in­di­vid­u­als were de­tained in the first place if they were now be­ing re­leased with­out fac­ing crim­i­nal charges.

Al-Rawi al­so called on Alexan­der to ex­plain state­ments at­trib­uted to him re­gard­ing the re­lease of a per­son held un­der a PDO. He fur­ther urged Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro to in­ves­ti­gate whether the re­spec­tive roles of the min­is­ter and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice had be­come blurred.

He warned that the Gov­ern­ment could face sig­nif­i­cant lit­i­ga­tion aris­ing from its use of pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion pow­ers.

Re­it­er­at­ing the PNM’s po­si­tion, Al-Rawi said any at­tempt to in­tro­duce an­oth­er State of Emer­gency, whether through a for­mal ex­ten­sion or by al­low­ing the cur­rent de­c­la­ra­tion to lapse be­fore im­pos­ing a new one, would be chal­lenged in court.

“If the Gov­ern­ment were to think of com­ing with an­oth­er state of emer­gency, not on­ly by way of ex­ten­sion but by paus­ing it for a few days or a few weeks and com­ing again, I can say to the Gov­ern­ment: we will meet you in court,” he said.

Al-Rawi added that the PNM was pre­pared to re­ly on rel­e­vant ju­rispru­dence from Be­lize and Ja­maica in pur­su­ing any such le­gal chal­lenge.