Clear the air on audio tape

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­[email protected]

At­tor­ney Fa­reed Ali yes­ter­day urged the Gov­ern­ment to clear the air over the au­then­tic­i­ty of the au­dio record­ing in­volv­ing Genevieve Hadeed and her aunt Star Sab­ga, which has be­come the cen­tre of an es­ca­lat­ing pub­lic de­bate on so­cial me­dia.

Ali said the State must con­firm whether the record­ing cir­cu­lat­ing pub­licly is a leaked ver­sion of the au­dio re­lied up­on when Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) were is­sued against mem­bers of the Hadeed fam­i­ly and Star Sab­ga.

“That au­dio clip­ping, the State needs to come out in the open and say whether this is in­deed a leaked ver­sion. What I would ex­pect now is for the re­spon­si­ble State body to step for­ward and re­spon­si­bly in­di­cate that what is in the pub­lic space was leaked or what is in the pub­lic space is not what they re­lied up­on or isn’t some­thing that one should as­sign val­ue to,” Ali said dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

The 15-minute record­ing cap­tures a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Sab­ga and Hadeed, dur­ing which Sab­ga was open­ly crit­i­cal of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, her re­la­tion­ship with the cur­rent Unit­ed States ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Gov­ern­ment gen­er­al­ly.

The de­bate over the record­ing comes ahead of Sab­ga’s re­turn to court to­day, af­ter ex­cerpts of the record­ing were used in an af­fi­davit pre­sent­ed to the court by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der on Fri­day.

In­for­ma­tion con­tained in the 19-page af­fi­davit dat­ed Ju­ly 24, 2026, sworn by Alexan­der, showed in­ter­cept­ed con­ver­sa­tions in­volv­ing Hadeed and Sab­ga.

Ali said the pub­lic does not yet know whether the au­dio cir­cu­lat­ing is the same record­ing the State re­lied up­on “be­fore form­ing a view and be­fore is­su­ing PDO’s in the name of the Hadeeds.”

“If it is in­deed the au­dio, ques­tions would arise as to how that in­tel­li­gence that was in the po­si­tion of the State came to be leaked.”

Ali said this would mean that of­fi­cial­ly or un­of­fi­cial­ly, some­one act­ing in the ca­pac­i­ty of an of­fi­cer of the State chose to re­lease it in­to the pub­lic do­main.

He said a state­ment was need­ed from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), while cau­tion­ing that opin­ions should not yet be formed.

Ali said the first is­sue to be de­ter­mined was whether the au­dio clip was au­then­tic.

“If this record­ing was tam­pered with in some way by who­ev­er was first in re­ceipt of it...and what we are get­ting now is an edit­ed ver­sion and a pro­fes­sion­al­ly edit­ed ver­sion, then it may cause per­sons to wrong­ful­ly form a view as to the ac­tions of the State, whether it was pro­por­tion­ate or whether it was cor­rect in act­ing as they do.”

He said no one knows whether the voic­es heard in the record­ing are those of Sab­ga and Hadeed.

“They have not come out and even made a pub­lic state­ment. I think it is dan­ger­ous to have a record­ing in the pub­lic space at this time, es­pe­cial­ly when we have a third par­ty, some­one who is sub­ject to a PDO, still sit­ting in a cell some­where. We need clar­i­ty in this sit­u­a­tion.”

Ali said an­oth­er fac­tor to con­sid­er was whether there was one au­dio record­ing or mul­ti­ple clips.

“If in­deed it is not the of­fi­cial au­dio clip­ping that the State was in re­ceipt of...that they act­ed up­on when is­su­ing the PDOs, then we can’t put any val­ue on that au­dio clip­ping.”

He said there may have been edit­ing to the record­ing cur­rent­ly cir­cu­lat­ing.

“So to the lay per­son who is lis­ten­ing, they may as­sign val­ue to what they hear and find it very in­nocu­ous...mean­ing harm­less. It may sound at the first glance to be the rant of some­body who is frus­trat­ed and there­fore may not be will­ing to act any fur­ther in re­la­tion to the com­ment they made. Mean­ing... they are giv­ing vent. They don’t have any in­tent to take it fur­ther.”

Ali said a prop­er as­sess­ment of the threat al­leged­ly posed by the in­di­vid­u­als could not be based sole­ly on the record­ing now in the pub­lic do­main.

The at­tor­ney warned mem­bers of the pub­lic to be cau­tious about form­ing views based on leaked in­for­ma­tion.

He said so­cial me­dia had re­act­ed strong­ly to the record­ing, caus­ing pub­lic may­hem.

He said what con­sti­tutes ev­i­dence is not just the au­dio it­self “but the rel­e­vance and ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty of it.”

In terms of ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed in court, Ali said it must al­ways meet the thresh­old of rel­e­vance and ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty.

Mean­while, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Garvin Nicholas ex­pressed con­cern “about the wide­spread phone tap­ping” and the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency, which has re­strict­ed cit­i­zens’ rights.

He said the Gov­ern­ment owed the coun­try an ex­pla­na­tion as to how the au­dio was leaked.

“I am very con­cerned based on the con­tents of the leaked au­dio. If that is the rea­son that per­sons were de­tained for over a month and have their rights and lib­er­ties de­nied...be­cause I don’t see that as a threat. But not on­ly do I not see it as a threat based on what the Court of Ap­peal said.”

Nicholas said the in­for­ma­tion would have been shared with the Court of Ap­peal.

“The Court of Ap­peal did not think it a con­spir­a­cy. We can­not con­tin­ue ar­bi­trar­i­ly cloak­ing every­thing in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty when it is clear that the ac­tions and be­hav­iour of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials do not match the al­leged threats against them.”

On the pro­ce­dure for wire­tap­ping and ob­tain­ing war­rants, Nicholas said au­thor­i­ties must ap­proach the court with ev­i­dence to ob­tain per­mis­sion.

“If it is that the Gov­ern­ment prop­er­ly ap­proached the Court and they were grant­ed it based on prop­er ev­i­dence, that is one thing. But what I can tell you is based on what they got from the even­tu­al tap­ping and what is placed in the pub­lic do­main, it cer­tain­ly does not war­rant the de­ten­tion of cit­i­zens and the pre­ven­tion of their hu­man rights or de­nial of hu­man rights based on that con­ver­sa­tion.”

If there is ad­di­tion­al ev­i­dence that the pub­lic is un­aware of, Nicholas said, the coun­try would have to wait and see.

How­ev­er, he said he could not sup­port that kind of be­hav­iour as a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter.

He said the en­e­mies of the coun­try were not its cit­i­zens or eth­nic­i­ties.

The Hadeeds and Sab­ga were ar­rest­ed last month un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders dur­ing a State of Emer­gency.

Last Thurs­day, Alexan­der re­voked the Hadeeds’ PDOs, al­low­ing them to walk free with­out be­ing charged.

How­ev­er, Sab­ga re­mains de­tained at the Women’s Prison in Arou­ca since June 24.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Alexan­der, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, Faris Al-Rawi and Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency di­rec­tor Ali­cia Hen­ry, but did not get a re­sponse up to press time.