State withdraws its Star Sabga house arrest appeal

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al have agreed to with­draw their ap­peal against a judge’s de­ci­sion to place 69-year-old cheese mak­er Star Sab­ga un­der house ar­rest af­ter she spent sev­er­al weeks in de­ten­tion un­der a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO).

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the TTPS and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice in­di­cat­ed their po­si­tion via email yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that while the State has agreed to dis­con­tin­ue the ap­peal, it has left it to the Court of Ap­peal to de­ter­mine whether Sab­ga should be award­ed le­gal costs for de­fend­ing the mat­ter.

Last Fri­day, Ap­pel­late Judge Car­la Brown-An­toine grant­ed the State time to con­sid­er the fu­ture of the ap­peal, not­ing that it had ef­fec­tive­ly be­come aca­d­e­m­ic fol­low­ing Sab­ga’s re­lease.

The hear­ing took place hours af­ter Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der ex­er­cised his dis­cre­tion to re­voke the PDO, bring­ing Sab­ga’s de­ten­tion at her West­moor­ings apart­ment to an end. Sab­ga, along with her niece Genevieve Hadeed and Genevieve’s hus­band, Do­minic Hadeed, was de­tained un­der PDOs in late June dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE), based on in­tel­li­gence re­port­ed­ly gath­ered by the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA).

The rel­a­tives were ac­cused of con­spir­ing to as­sas­si­nate se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

The Hadeeds’ ini­tial bid for in­ter­im re­lease was re­ject­ed by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad but lat­er up­held by a pan­el of the Court of Ap­peal, which ques­tioned the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion ad­vanced by Alexan­der for their con­tin­ued de­ten­tion un­der the PDOs.

How­ev­er, an­oth­er Court of Ap­peal pan­el, led by Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh, stayed that rul­ing pend­ing the out­come of the State’s fi­nal ap­peal be­fore the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil.

The SoE Re­view Tri­bunal sub­se­quent­ly rec­om­mend­ed the trio’s re­lease.

The PDOs against the Hadeeds were even­tu­al­ly with­drawn af­ter the Privy Coun­cil in­di­cat­ed that it would not hear the State’s ap­peal un­til Oc­to­ber. The stay had been grant­ed large­ly on the ba­sis that the ap­peal would be heard by the coun­try’s high­est ap­pel­late court with­in two weeks.

In late Ju­ly, High Court Judge Vigel Paul or­dered that Sab­ga be placed un­der the same house ar­rest con­di­tions pre­vi­ous­ly im­posed by the ini­tial Court of Ap­peal pan­el in re­la­tion to the Hadeeds. The TTPS and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice sub­se­quent­ly chal­lenged that de­ci­sion.

Sab­ga and the Hadeeds are now pur­su­ing a sub­stan­tive con­sti­tu­tion­al claim chal­leng­ing their de­ten­tion. They al­lege that they have been tar­get­ed by the Gov­ern­ment be­cause of their eth­nic­i­ty and be­cause of sep­a­rate le­gal pro­ceed­ings brought by the Hadeeds over at­tempts to ter­mi­nate their leas­es for State-owned land.

They con­tend that their ar­rests fol­lowed what they de­scribe as veiled threats made by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, dur­ing a par­lia­men­tary de­bate on ex­tend­ing the SoE.

The claimants have al­so chal­lenged the grounds for their de­ten­tion, ar­gu­ing that state­ments al­leged­ly made by Sab­ga dur­ing an in­ter­cept­ed con­ver­sa­tion with Genevieve Hadeed were in­cor­rect­ly at­trib­uted to Do­minic Hadeed in his PDO.

The sub­stan­tive mat­ter is sched­uled to be heard on Oc­to­ber 19.

Sab­ga and the Hadeeds are rep­re­sent­ed by Dou­glas Mendes, SC, Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Rishi Dass, SC, Faris Al-Rawi, SC, Chase Pe­gus, Dhar­men­dra Pun­wasee, Jerome Ra­jku­mar and Car­lon McLeod.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice and the TTPS are rep­re­sent­ed by British King’s Coun­sel Sir James Ead­ie, Ger­ald Ramdeen, Dayadai Har­ri­paul and ASP Ram­dath Phillip.