“Brothel owner” loses challenge over PDO detention

Derek Achong

A busi­ness­man from cen­tral Trinidad, sus­pect­ed of op­er­at­ing a broth­el and en­gag­ing in hu­man traf­fick­ing, has lost his le­gal chal­lenge over be­ing de­tained on a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) for the past three months.

De­liv­er­ing an oral judg­ment this morn­ing, High Court Judge Christo­pher Sieuc­hand dis­missed Lloyd Sealey’s case.

Jus­tice Sieuc­hand re­ject­ed Sealey’s claim that the al­le­ga­tions against him con­tained in the PDO were in­con­sis­tent with the aims of the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) and the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions (EPR) un­der which the PDO was is­sued.

“There is suf­fi­cient link which is enough to jus­ti­fy the de­ci­sion be­ing tak­en by the min­is­ter,” Jus­tice Sieuc­hand said.

He al­so dis­missed the sec­ond limb of Sealey’s case deal­ing with the de­ci­sion of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der to main­tain the PDO even af­ter the SoE Re­view Tri­bunal rec­om­mend­ed that it (the PDO) be lift­ed while law en­force­ment of­fi­cers con­tin­ue their probe in­to Sealey.

Not­ing that un­der the reg­u­la­tions, Alexan­der is not bound to ac­cept the tri­bunal’s rec­om­men­da­tion, Jus­tice Sieuc­hand said: “He (Alexan­der) was en­ti­tled to come to his own con­clu­sion.”

“The rea­sons pro­vid­ed to jus­ti­fy his de­ci­sion to re­ject the rec­om­men­da­tion are not un­rea­son­able,” he added.

As part of his de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Sieuc­hand or­dered Sealey to pay 85 per cent of the le­gal costs in­curred by the State to de­fend his case.

Sealey was ar­rest­ed at The Man­sion Night­club, which he al­leged­ly op­er­ates at Mar­shall Trace, Munroe Road, Cunu­pia, in March.

Sealey was in­formed that he was be­ing held based on an in­ves­ti­ga­tion un­der the Dan­ger­ous Drugs Act and the Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Act.

His de­ten­tion was ex­tend­ed un­der the pro­vi­sions of the EPR and he was even­tu­al­ly is­sued with a PDO.

The PDO stat­ed that Sealey was iden­ti­fied by con­fi­den­tial in­tel­li­gence and sus­pect­ed of op­er­at­ing the night­club as a base for an or­gan­ised crime group/gang en­gaged in hu­man traf­fick­ing and the com­mer­cial sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion of for­eign na­tion­als.

“In­tel­li­gence in­di­cates that the de­tainee over­sees a struc­tured net­work that en­gages in vi­o­lent crim­i­nal acts and re­cruits, har­bours, and re­dis­trib­utes vic­tims while laun­der­ing il­lic­it pro­ceeds,” it said.

Sev­er­al weeks lat­er, Sealey ap­plied for a re­view be­fore the tri­bunal un­der the EPR, and Alexan­der pro­vid­ed some ad­di­tion­al par­tic­u­lars re­lat­ed to his de­ci­sion to is­sue the PDO.

Alexan­der not­ed that when of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit (SIU) ex­e­cut­ed search war­rants at the busi­ness and ar­rest­ed Sealey, 47 fe­male for­eign na­tion­als and a quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na and co­caine were found.

“Of­fi­cers al­so ob­served nu­mer­ous women en­gaged in ac­tiv­i­ties con­sis­tent with com­mer­cial sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion, cor­rob­o­rat­ing the in­tel­li­gence re­gard­ing the na­ture of the en­ter­prise,” Alexan­der said.

“The premis­es com­prise mul­ti­ple build­ings, serv­ing dis­tinct op­er­a­tional pur­pos­es, in­clud­ing a build­ing used as a broth­el, ac­com­mo­da­tion for traf­ficked for­eign na­tion­als, and ad­di­tion­al quar­ters used for as­so­ci­at­ed ac­tiv­i­ties,” he added.

On May 7, the tri­bunal in­di­cat­ed that it was of the opin­ion that there was in­suf­fi­cient cause for the de­tainee’s de­ten­tion and that his con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was not nec­es­sary or ex­pe­di­ent in the pub­lic in­ter­est.

Re­spond­ing to the rec­om­men­da­tions, Alexan­der ex­plained that he re­ject­ed them be­cause he was not af­ford­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make sub­mis­sions be­fore the tri­bunal.

He stat­ed that he con­clud­ed that Sealey’s re­lease would pose an on­go­ing risk to pub­lic safe­ty and his con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was nec­es­sary to en­sure that the op­er­a­tions of the or­gan­ised crime group al­leged­ly con­nect­ed to him re­mained dis­rupt­ed.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions yes­ter­day, Sealey’s lawyer Keron Ramkhal­whan, of Ju­ris X Cham­bers, claimed that the PDO was not re­quired for the po­lice to con­tin­ue to in­ves­ti­gate his client.

“There is no rea­son why or­di­nary laws could not be suf­fi­cient to deal with Lloyd Sealey’s con­duct,” Ramkhal­whan said.

Call­ing for the PDO to be in­val­i­dat­ed, Ramkhal­whan said: “It does not mean that he will walk out of prison and the po­lice can not do him any­thing. You can still charge him.”

While ques­tion­ing Ramkhal­whan, Jus­tice Sieuc­hand chal­lenged his claims over rec­on­cil­ing the PDO with the aims of the SoE.

“The SoE deals with threats to pub­lic of­fi­cials and high­etened crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty,” Jus­tice Sieuc­hand said, as he not­ed that he had to con­sid­er the per­va­sive­ness of the gang-re­lat­ed con­duct Sealey has been ac­cused of en­gag­ing in.

He sug­gest­ed that a broad ap­proach to the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the SoE had to be adopt­ed.

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions, at­tor­ney Jared Ja­groo, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, stat­ed that Alexan­der’s han­dling of Sealey’s PDO could not be fault­ed.

Stat­ing that the crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty Sealey is ac­cused of is se­ri­ous, Ja­groo said: “These things are at the very least crim­i­nal con­duct and at its high­est a threat to pub­lic safe­ty.”

“They have not said what is the al­ter­na­tive that could and should have been done by the min­is­ter,” he added.

Sealey was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by An­war Ho­sein. The State was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Lester Chari­ah, and Lemuel Mur­phy.