Man awarded over $200,000 for wrongful arrest in 2018 Carnival plot probe

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A San Juan man has been award­ed over $200,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for be­ing wrong­ful­ly ar­rest­ed, false­ly im­pris­oned and as­sault­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing their probe in­to an al­leged plot to dis­rupt Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in 2018. 

High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion for Tariq Mo­hammed (no re­la­tion to judge) as he up­held his case against the State last week. 

The out­come of the case came a lit­tle over a year af­ter Tariq’s younger broth­er, Wasim, was award­ed $100,000 in com­pen­sa­tion over his treat­ment by the of­fi­cers when they raid­ed the fam­i­ly’s home at Mo­hammed Ville, El So­cor­ro Road, San Juan, on Feb­ru­ary 8, 2018. 

The of­fi­cers searched an apart­ment shared by Mo­hammed’s younger broth­er and his wife be­fore search­ing the area of the prop­er­ty shared by Mo­hammed, his wife and par­ents. 

The of­fi­cers left af­ter they did not find any il­le­gal items, in­clud­ing ex­plo­sives.

How­ev­er, they re­turned hours lat­er to ar­rest Mo­hammed based on the in­struc­tions of an as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, who was pur­port­ed­ly re­ly­ing on in­for­ma­tion re­ceived from a for­eign in­tel­li­gence agency. 

He was de­tained at the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion for sev­en days be­fore be­ing re­leased with­out be­ing charged. 

Both sib­lings filed cas­es through lawyers Alvin Ram­roop, Kings­ley Wales­by and Sar­fraz Al­saran. 

In de­ter­min­ing the most re­cent case, Jus­tice Mo­hammed found that Tariq was un­law­ful­ly ar­rest­ed and false­ly im­pris­oned by the of­fi­cers dur­ing their first vis­it to his home, al­though he was not then forced to leave with them (the of­fi­cers). His find­ing was based on Tariq be­ing re­strained with tie-straps dur­ing the search. 

“The na­ture of that re­straint rather than its du­ra­tion is de­ci­sive,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed said. 

Deal­ing with the sec­ond vis­it, af­ter which Tariq was tak­en in­to cus­tody, Jus­tice Mo­hammed not­ed the of­fi­cers did not have rea­son­able or prob­a­ble cause to ar­rest him af­ter the ini­tial search did not yield any il­le­gal items. He al­so re­ject­ed the State’s re­liance on the pur­port­ed in­tel­li­gence re­ports as he not­ed such was not dis­closed and the ACP who al­leged­ly re­ceived it did not tes­ti­fy in the case. 

“I note a crit­i­cal ab­sence of ob­jec­tive facts con­nect­ing the claimant to any ar­restable of­fence at the time he was tak­en in­to cus­tody,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed said. 

“I am not sat­is­fied that the de­fen­dant has dis­charged its bur­den of prov­ing that a rea­son­able sus­pi­cion ex­ist­ed,” he added. 

In rul­ing that Tariq had been false­ly im­pris­oned while be­ing kept at the sta­tion for a week, Jus­tice Mo­hammed re­ject­ed the of­fi­cers’ claim that they need­ed time to analyse elec­tron­ic de­vices and in­ter­view oth­er de­tainees. 

“A blan­ket as­ser­tion of on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions can­not serve as a sub­sti­tute for the strict le­gal re­quire­ment to jus­ti­fy a de­ten­tion. The po­lice were ob­lig­at­ed to ei­ther charge the claimant or re­lease him once the ini­tial in­ter­view had con­clud­ed and no ev­i­dence was found,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed said. 

He al­so found that Tariq had been as­sault­ed by be­ing re­strained along with his fa­ther Shamoon dur­ing the search. 

“I ac­cept that these sud­den, force­ful, in­va­sive and in­tru­sive ac­tions left the claimant vul­ner­a­ble and con­sti­tut­ed an im­mi­nent and hos­tile threat to the claimant,” he said. 

Jus­tice Mo­hammed or­dered $145,000 in dam­ages, which was par­tial­ly based on his ar­rest tak­ing place in front of many fam­i­ly mem­bers. 

“The pres­ence of a larg­er au­di­ence of fam­i­ly mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly young chil­dren, com­pound­ed the hu­mil­i­a­tion, em­bar­rass­ment, and in­dig­ni­ty suf­fered,” he said. 

He was al­so award­ed $40,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages, in­ter­est on the com­pen­sa­tion, and his le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the law­suit. 

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, Tariq’s fa­ther Shamoon, a pop­u­lar ra­dio an­nounc­er, said his fam­i­ly was re­lieved the cas­es pur­sued by his sons were up­held. 

He said he and his fam­i­ly were shocked that Tariq was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed, as they have al­ways been law-abid­ing cit­i­zens. 

“We taught our chil­dren to show re­spect for the rule of law, val­ue your coun­try, your com­mu­ni­ty and its peo­ples and al­ways stay on the right side of the law,” Shamoon said. 

“We have al­ways stuck to the side of re­spect for the rule of law, you know, de­vel­op­ing har­mo­nious racial re­la­tions and things like that,” he added. 

He said his fam­i­ly felt com­pelled to take le­gal ac­tion based on their trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence.

“We were not go­ing to sit down and al­low that to go away,” he said. 

He ex­pressed hope that his fam­i­ly’s ex­pe­ri­ence may in­spire oth­ers to stand up for their rights. 

“We are hop­ing that this will be an ex­am­ple for the rest of the com­mu­ni­ty where peo­ple must not take, you know, evil ac­tions even if it comes from mem­bers of the armed forces,” he said. 

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by San­jeev Lal­la and Brent James.