PDO detainee recalls four months in ‘hell’

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­[email protected]

For four months, PDO de­tainee Dil­lon Chotoo says he slept in a leak­ing 20-foot con­tain­er cell at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC) in San­ta Rosa, sur­round­ed by rats and cock­roach­es, some­times with­out run­ning wa­ter and, at one point, with a clogged toi­let filled with waste that re­mained un­us­able for days.

Then his Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) was re­voked, and he walked out of prison with­out an ex­pla­na­tion and with­out be­ing charged.

Chotoo, who was re­leased last Fri­day, de­scribed his de­ten­tion un­der the State of Emer­gency (SoE) as “hell” and said he is now seek­ing an apol­o­gy from Gov­ern­ment and in­tends to take le­gal ac­tion against the State.

How­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment had pre­vi­ous­ly made se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions against him.

His PDO, Le­gal No­tice No. 332 of 2026, was is­sued on May 15 un­der the name Dil­lon Chootoo.

The or­der al­leged Chotoo was “cred­i­bly iden­ti­fied” as a mem­ber of a group falling with­in the de­f­i­n­i­tion of the An­ti-Gang Act. It fur­ther al­leged the group had ac­cess to firearms and am­mu­ni­tion and was in­volved in armed home in­va­sions, rob­beries and vi­o­lent at­tacks. Ac­cord­ing to the or­der, Chotoo and oth­ers in­tend­ed to con­tin­ue or es­ca­late vi­o­lent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, and his de­ten­tion was deemed nec­es­sary to pre­vent him from act­ing in a man­ner prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty.

Chotoo, how­ev­er, de­nies any in­volve­ment in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. He said po­lice ini­tial­ly de­tained and ques­tioned him twice about two home in­va­sions in his area but he was nev­er charged. In­stead, six days lat­er, he was trans­ferred to ECRC, where he was in­formed he was be­ing de­tained un­der a PDO.

“When I do the two in­ter­views, for the two house in­va­sions, they nev­er give me no case,” Chotoo said.

“For the first three months in there when the SoE now start, they nev­er give me no case. The first SoE done, they nev­er give me no case. When the next time they ex­tend the SoE now over here, they’re re­leas­ing peo­ple on the thing and they re­lease me just so. They didn’t even give me no charge, noth­ing.”

Chotoo said con­di­tions at ECRC quick­ly be­came an­oth­er or­deal.

Ac­cord­ing to him, about eight men were housed in a 20-foot con­tain­er cell with on­ly two bunk beds, forc­ing sev­er­al de­tainees to sleep on the floor.

“When it rains, the roof leak­ing and falling straight up on your bed spot it­self. The prison leak­ing; it’s in a re­al bad state. Week­end, you don’t get no wa­ter,” he claimed.

“The con­tain­ers have hole to the un­der­neath with cock­roach com­ing through, rat com­ing through in­side the con­tain­er where you’re sleep­ing.”

Chotoo claimed he de­vel­oped a se­vere rash while in­car­cer­at­ed and claimed oth­er de­tainees ex­pe­ri­enced sim­i­lar ill­ness­es. Ac­cord­ing to him, the rash spread among de­tainees, af­fect­ing their backs, arms, legs and feet and, in some cas­es, de­vel­op­ing in­to open sores.

He al­so com­plained about the qual­i­ty of the food.

Out­side prison, Chotoo said his fam­i­ly strug­gled dur­ing his de­ten­tion. With the new school year ap­proach­ing, he said he was un­able to pro­vide for his chil­dren.

“I had to de­pend on peo­ple to buy books for my child to send to school be­cause I lock up in prison. All for noth­ing, no crime I did,” he said.

He al­so com­plained about lim­it­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion with rel­a­tives.

“You have to wait about 20 days to get one wel­fare call, which is two min­utes. When you go by the wel­fare, you have to wait half-day for a wel­fare call to call your fam­i­ly,” he said.

Chotoo said the day he was re­leased was the first time in four months he was able to speak with his daugh­ter.

Asked to sum­marise his ex­pe­ri­ence, he replied: “That’s hell, boy. A prison is hell. It’s the worst prison. I don’t even wish that on my own en­e­my.”

He added: “The Gov­ern­ment right now with this SoE thing and PDO, that is hell for peo­ple. When they just take some­body just so, you have no ev­i­dence of them on such crime or what­ev­er, and you just put them here and not a lawyer can even help you to come out of it.”

Yes­ter­day, the T&T Prison Ser­vice said it had so far re­voked 276 PDOs and re­leased 187 de­tainees, with a fur­ther 89 re­main­ing in cus­tody.

The SoE ends on Thurs­day.