Court orders Star Sabga be released; attorneys request stay

A High Court Judge has or­dered the re­lease of 69-year-old cheese mak­er Star Sab­ga on house ar­rest.

Jus­tice Vigel Paul made the or­der a short while ago as he up­held an ap­pli­ca­tion made by her lawyers.

How­ev­er, Sab­ga's le­gal vic­to­ry may be short lived as State at­tor­neys ap­plied for a stay of the de­ci­sion as was done when busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve ob­tained a sim­i­lar con­di­tion­al re­lease by a pan­el of the Court of Ap­peal, two weeks ago.

In his de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Paul ques­tioned the need for Sab­ga to re­main de­tained af­ter the Hadeeds were re­leased when Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der re­voked pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion or­ders against them last week.

"If per­sons set to be at the cen­tre of con­spir­a­cy can safe­ly be at large, the court can­not see how the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion of this el­der­ly woman can be said to be nec­es­sary to pre­vent dan­ger," Jus­tice Paul said.

Jus­tice Paul found there was no ev­i­dence that Sab­ga was in­volved in fur­ther­ing the al­leged con­spir­a­cy to as­sas­si­nate key gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials af­ter she made state­ments in an in­ter­cept­ed tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with Genevieve in June.

"There is ab­sence of any ev­i­dence that she en­gaged in any con­spir­a­cy or en­gaged in any step oth­er than ini­tial con­ver­sa­tion. A case of on­go­ing dan­ger must re­quire more than in­tel­li­gence," Jus­tice Paul said.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on the ap­pli­ca­tion, Sab­ga's lawyer Rishi Dass claimed that an in­ter­cept­ed tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Sab­ga and Genevieve Hadeed on June 11 had been giv­en a "twist­ed" or "far­ci­cal" in­ter­pre­ta­tion by law en­force­ment of­fi­cials.

He not­ed that con­ver­sa­tion took place af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, SC, made com­ments in re­la­tion to the "one per cent" while pi­lot­ing a mo­tion in Par­lia­ment to ex­tend the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency by three months.

"It came a day af­ter the AG's at­tack on a mi­nor­i­ty eth­nic group in this coun­try. They were vent­ing in a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion as any­one may do af­ter be­ing sub­ject to such an at­tack," Dass said.

De­scrib­ing claims of a mur­der con­spir­a­cy as far-fetched, Dass said: "There must be ev­i­dence of con­spir­ing not just two women vent­ing among them­selves. Worse is said on po­lit­i­cal haust­ings every­day."

"It is prac­ti­cal­ly a thought crime," Dass added.

He claimed that while Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter ini­tial­ly claimed that Sab­ga and the Hadeed were part of a con­spir­a­cy to as­sas­si­nate key gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials when he is­sued Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) against them, he sub­se­quent­ly claimed that Sab­ga's con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was nec­es­sary as her state­ments had the po­ten­tial to in­cite vi­o­lence against pub­lic of­fi­cials.

"There is now the whole­sale aban­don­ment of as­sis­san­taion plot," Dass said, as he claimed that Sab­ga's state­ments could not amount to sedi­tion as they were not broad­cast to the pub­lic.

Dass claimed that the state­ments linked to Sab­ga were ini­tial­ly as­cribed to the Hadeeds be­fore Alexan­der dis­closed a tran­script of the in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion, last week.

"It casts a dark shad­ow on the in­tel­li­gence ser­vices of T&T if they can­not get that right," Dass said.

Dass al­so ques­tioned the need for Sab­ga's de­ten­tion while the probe con­tin­ues as he not­ed that the po­lice were still in the process of analysing the elec­tron­ic de­vices of the Hadeeds, who were re­leased from PDOs last week.

"No elec­tron­ic de­vices were tak­en from Miss Star Sab­ga," Dass said.

Claim­ing that Sab­ga lost 29 pounds while de­tained in prison over the past month, Dass said that the probe could con­tin­ue while she re­mains un­der house ar­rest.

"We are not seek­ing to de­tain Ja­son Bourne but a 69-year-old cheese mak­er," he said.

Dass al­so ac­cused the State of leak­ing the record­ing of the 15 minute in­ter­cept­ed con­ver­sa­tion which was wide­ly shared on so­cial me­dia over the week­end.

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions, at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen called on Jus­tice Paul to de­ny the re­quest.

He sug­gest­ed that Sab­ga could not seek in­ter­im re­lease af­ter fil­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion al­leg­ing a breach of her rights and should have sought to ju­di­cial re­view Alexan­der's de­ci­sion to dis­re­gard the de­ci­sion of the SoE Re­view Tri­bunal to rec­om­mend her re­lease.

He not­ed that a pan­el of the Court of Ap­peal or­dered the Hadeeds' con­di­tion­al re­lease be­fore the SoE Re­view Tri­bunal rec­om­mend­ed that their and Sab­ga's de­ten­tions should be lift­ed.

"The court is be­ing asked to grant in­ter­im re­lief in a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion, while the min­is­ter's de­ci­sion un­der the con­sti­tu­tion re­mains in­tact. Re­lief un­der the con­sti­tu­tion is dis­cre­tionary," Ramdeen said.

Ramdeen al­so called on Jus­tice Paul to de­cline to sec­ond guess the risk as­sess­ment done by Alexan­der, the po­lice, and the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA).

"Judges do not have ju­ris­dic­tion to as­sess the as­sess­ments of in­tel­li­gence ser­vices. The ju­di­cia­ry is not qual­i­fied to un­der­take as­sess­ments of risks," Ramdeen said.

"Is it per­mis­si­ble for the Ju­di­cia­ry to tres­pass on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed realm of the ex­ec­u­tive?" Ramdeen asked.

He al­so called on Jus­tice Paul to give def­er­ence to Alexan­der's as­sess­ment based on his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in re­la­tion to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sues and his role in is­su­ing PDOs un­der the SoE.

"If you take the de­ci­sion to re­lease the ap­pli­cant and to­mor­row the Prime Min­is­ter is ex­e­cut­ed, are you re­spon­si­ble to the elec­torate?" he said.