Celebration sweeps through Blue Waters as Hadeeds freed

AN­DREA PEREZ SOBERS

& PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Re­lief and cel­e­bra­tion swept through Blue Wa­ters Prod­ucts Lim­it­ed yes­ter­day, af­ter em­ploy­ees learned ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Do­minic Hadeed had been freed from prison.

Many work­ers were un­aware Hadeed had been re­leased ear­li­er in the day, and re­mained fo­cused on their du­ties at the com­pa­ny’s com­pound.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed one em­ploy­ee for a re­ac­tion, the work­er had not yet heard the news. Mo­ments af­ter be­ing told, how­ev­er, the em­ploy­ee shout­ed across the work­place, “Boss re­leased!”

The an­nounce­ment quick­ly spread through the com­pa­ny, prompt­ing smiles, cheers and ex­pres­sions of re­lief from work­ers who had been anx­ious­ly await­ing the out­come of the court pro­ceed­ings. One em­ploy­ee said, “It was about time they re­leased him,” adding that they hoped “jus­tice will be served.”

An­oth­er em­ploy­ee be­came emo­tion­al while speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, say­ing they could not wait to see Hadeed.

“I prayed every night for his re­lease. I can’t wait to see Do­minic back,” the em­ploy­ee said.

Sev­er­al work­ers, many of whom re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, de­scribed the news as a weight be­ing lift­ed af­ter weeks of un­cer­tain­ty. They said staff had re­mained hope­ful through­out Hadeed’s de­ten­tion and sub­se­quent house ar­rest, be­liev­ing he would even­tu­al­ly be freed.

Some em­ploy­ees said Hadeed was more than just the own­er, de­scrib­ing him as a leader who has al­ways main­tained a close re­la­tion­ship with staff and reg­u­lar­ly in­ter­acts with em­ploy­ees through­out the com­pa­ny. Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) CEO Ramesh Ramdeen said he would wel­come Hadeed back.

Ramdeen said, “We wel­come a busi­ness­man back in­to the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment to con­tin­ue with his busi­ness, and un­til there’s any rea­son and cred­i­ble ev­i­dence to put any­body be­hind bars, then that will hap­pen. If or when ev­i­dence is found to be jus­ti­fy­ing the cause to put them be­hind bars, but un­til then, we ap­pre­ci­ate, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty ap­pre­ci­ates the fact that he’s back to run his busi­ness and con­tin­ue to con­tribute to the com­mu­ni­ty and the coun­try Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Mean­while, so­cial ac­tivist Gary Aboud slammed the use of the State of Emer­gency pow­ers as a tool to push a hate cam­paign in the coun­try.

Con­tact­ed fol­low­ing the re­lease of the Hadeeds, Aboud said, “The cam­paign of hate be­ing con­duct­ed by se­nior cab­i­net mem­bers must be ad­dressed by a na­tion­al au­di­ence.

“The cam­paign of hate start­ed when cer­tain peo­ple were brought in­to the par­ty. This cam­paign will de­stroy our flag, our pic­ture, pa­tri­ots and di­vide our na­tion in­to its own demise.”

He said the SoE pow­ers were now be­ing used to dis­cred­it de­cent peo­ple.

Aboud ex­plained, “In oth­er words, what they are do­ing is un­der­min­ing the whole prin­ci­ple up­on which the na­tion was built here, every creed and race finds an equal place, and they are en­gag­ing in tor­ment for land and for oil. ... Now they are us­ing the State of Emer­gency to un­der­mine the in­tegri­ty of de­cent peo­ple. I will not be, I will not be afraid to speak the truth, re­gard­less of the con­se­quences.”

Last month, Aboud not­ed that the Syr­i­an/Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty was be­ing tar­get­ed and forced out of T&T, af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie’s com­ments in Par­lia­ment, dur­ing de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the SoE, sug­gest­ing that the ‘one per cent’ was linked to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

The AG’s com­ments were backed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, prompt­ing Aboud to state then that her com­ments were “ir­re­spon­si­ble and un­be­com­ing at best.”

Mean­while, the rel­a­tives of an­oth­er PDO de­tainee, Na­tal­ie Har­ford, said they were ob­serv­ing the Hadeeds’ re­lease.

The fam­i­ly would not share any oth­er com­ment on the mat­ter, as they are await­ing Har­ford’s own ap­pear­ance be­fore a State of Emer­gency (SoE) Re­view Tri­bunal

Har­ford, the daugh­ter of late Mario’s Piz­za founder Richard Har­ford, was de­tained by po­lice un­der a pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­der in April.

In the or­der, signed by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der on April 4, the Gov­ern­ment stat­ed, “The de­tainee, Na­tal­ie Har­ford, has been cred­i­bly iden­ti­fied as a fi­nancier of the Sev­en Gang, which is an Or­gan­ised Crime Group (OCG). The OCG has con­firmed ac­cess to a cache of high-pow­ered firearms and am­mu­ni­tion and is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in dis­putes with ri­vals over ter­ri­to­ry.

“The de­tainee pro­vides cash sup­port to fund the op­er­a­tions of the OCG, which in­tends to im­mi­nent­ly car­ry out reprisal at­tacks on ri­vals in pub­lic spaces us­ing high-pow­ered ri­fles.

The de­tainee has al­so is­sued threats to di­rect known mem­bers of the OCG to at­tack her per­son­al tar­gets, in­clud­ing pri­vate cit­i­zens and po­lice of­fi­cers.

The fam­i­ly has de­nied these al­le­ga­tions and has made le­gal chal­lenges to have Har­ford freed.