563 SoE detainees to be freed in batches over six days

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials say they were giv­en in­struc­tions to re­lease a to­tal of 563 State of Emer­gency (SoE) de­tainees from prison fa­cil­i­ties in east Trinidad over a phased six-day pe­ri­od, with the cur­rent SoE due to ex­pire on Sep­tem­ber 17.

How­ev­er, as prison and po­lice of­fi­cers pre­pare for the re­lease process, rel­a­tives wait­ing out­side the cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties say the lengthy de­lays are test­ing their pa­tience.

Yes­ter­day, a po­lice source con­firmed that the phased re­lease sys­tem was im­ple­ment­ed to pre­vent se­cu­ri­ty re­sources from be­ing over­whelmed while en­sur­ing de­tainees are re­leased safe­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly.

Ac­cord­ing to the source, phase one of the ex­er­cise runs from Sep­tem­ber 10-12 and pri­mar­i­ly in­volves de­tainees clas­si­fied as low risk. Ad­di­tion­al re­leas­es are ex­pect­ed next week, in­clud­ing in­di­vid­u­als con­sid­ered high­er risk.

An es­ti­mat­ed 300 de­tainees are ex­pect­ed to be re­leased dur­ing the first phase, the source said.

While au­thor­i­ties were un­able to con­firm the to­tal num­ber re­leased up to yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, sources re­port­ed that 31 de­tainees were freed on Thurs­day. Of that num­ber, 29 were re­leased from the Gold­en Grove Prison, while one de­tainee each was re­leased from the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC) and the Women’s Prison in Arou­ca.

Dur­ing a con­tri­bu­tion in Par­lia­ment last evening, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said 702 PDOs were ap­proved and 573 were ex­e­cut­ed, while law en­force­ment sub­se­quent­ly charged 240 peo­ple who were de­tained un­der PDOs.

When Guardian Me­dia ar­rived at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC) in San­ta Rosa short­ly be­fore 8 am yes­ter­day, prison of­fi­cers were sta­tioned be­hind bar­ri­ers at the en­trance. Mean­while, a line of ve­hi­cles had al­ready formed along Pin­to Road No 3, which runs par­al­lel to the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way.

One woman, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said prison of­fi­cials con­tact­ed her short­ly af­ter 1 pm on Thurs­day and in­struct­ed her to ar­rive at the fa­cil­i­ty by 8 am yes­ter­day, al­though the first re­leas­es were sched­uled to be­gin at 10 am. Hours lat­er, she was still wait­ing.

“One of the fe­male prison of­fi­cers said it could be af­ter lunch, it could be this evening, or it could be lat­er on. We don’t know. We’re just here wait­ing.

“And we’re hun­gry. We don’t have any wa­ter, and you can’t move to get any­thing be­cause you don’t know when they might call your turn to col­lect some­one.”

With­out re­veal­ing the iden­ti­ty of her rel­a­tive, her re­la­tion­ship to him, or the rea­son he was placed un­der a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO), the woman de­scribed the emo­tion­al and fi­nan­cial strain the de­ten­tion had placed on her fam­i­ly.

“He is the bread­win­ner and for me this whole SoE... they say they’re work­ing on pri­vate in­tel­li­gence and I don’t know how true that is be­cause half of the things they’re say­ing are not even true.

“They’re go­ing on hearsay. My rel­a­tive was held for a month and three weeks. He has chil­dren, so right now all the strain is on me.”

An­oth­er woman al­so ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over the lack of in­for­ma­tion from au­thor­i­ties and the pro­longed wait, par­tic­u­lar­ly as she works full-time.

“I want to be­lieve they could have han­dled things a lot bet­ter be­cause if you tell peo­ple to come here for 8 am and it’s now 12 o’clock and noth­ing has hap­pened yet, that’s un­ac­cept­able,” she said.

“I’m just hop­ing I’m not here un­til 8 o’clock tonight like some peo­ple are say­ing be­cause we have oth­er things to do. It’s an in­con­ve­nience, but at the same time we’re glad to have our fam­i­ly mem­ber com­ing home, so we’re just wait­ing and watch­ing.”

She said she be­lieves her rel­a­tive was de­tained with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and that he re­cent­ly de­scribed con­di­tions at the ECRC as “bad.”

“He just want­ed to come home. It wasn’t good.”

Guardian Me­dia sought a re­sponse from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice on mea­sures be­ing im­ple­ment­ed to main­tain se­cu­ri­ty in com­mu­ni­ties fol­low­ing the de­tainees’ re­lease. How­ev­er, no re­sponse was re­ceived up to press time.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s op­er­a­tion, heav­i­ly armed prison and po­lice of­fi­cers mon­i­tored ac­cess routes to the fa­cil­i­ty, con­duct­ing ve­hi­cle search­es and record­ing the names and per­son­al de­tails of vis­i­tors for se­cu­ri­ty pur­pos­es.

As the day pro­gressed, more rel­a­tives joined the queue out­side the prison. Some passed the time chat­ting with oth­ers, while some even­tu­al­ly left the area as the wait con­tin­ued.