Judiciary urges due process after magistrate’s home searched

The Ju­di­cia­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go says due process and the pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence re­main im­por­tant fol­low­ing a po­lice search of the home of Act­ing Chief Mag­is­trate Bri­an De­bideen.

In a state­ment is­sued on Tues­day, the Ju­di­cia­ry said it was aware of re­ports con­cern­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of a search war­rant in re­la­tion to De­bideen.

The Trinidad Ex­press re­port­ed on Tues­day that po­lice searched De­bideen’s home in Gulf View, San Fer­nan­do, and seized his elec­tron­ic de­vices as part of a wider in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­volv­ing lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al law en­force­ment agen­cies.

The Ju­di­cia­ry said it would re­frain from fur­ther com­ment to pro­tect the fair­ness and in­tegri­ty of any on­go­ing in­ves­tiga­tive or le­gal process­es.

“The Ju­di­cia­ry recog­nis­es the im­por­tance of the core le­gal prin­ci­ples of due process, the pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence and that all per­sons are con­sid­ered to be equal be­fore the law,” the state­ment said.