From CLR James to the Hadeeds: T&T’s history of house arrest

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­[email protected]

For over six decades, house ar­rests in T&T have emerged as a rare but pow­er­ful le­gal mea­sure.

There were two re­port­ed cas­es of house ar­rests in the coun­try.

On Thurs­day, the Ap­peal Court or­dered the im­me­di­ate re­lease of Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve from prison, rul­ing that the Hadeeds should in­stead re­main un­der strict house ar­rest at their Bayshore West­moor­ings home while their le­gal chal­lenge to their Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) pro­ceeds.

How­ev­er, the Hadeeds’ hopes for free­dom were dashed af­ter the State op­posed their re­lease and sought an emer­gency hear­ing on Thurs­day night, with the Court of Ap­peal sub­se­quent­ly stay­ing the de­ci­sion to re­lease them.

The cou­ple was ar­rest­ed on June 24 in re­la­tion to an al­leged plot to mur­der gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The Hadeeds have been in­car­cer­at­ed at the Gold­en Grove Prison Re­mand Yard and the Women’s Prison in Arou­ca.

Some­one un­der house ar­rest is legal­ly re­quired to stay at home rather than go to jail.

One of the first in T&T’s his­to­ry dates back to 1965 when po­lit­i­cal the­o­rist CLR James was placed un­der house ar­rest in Barataria by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment led by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams. A State of Emer­gency was de­clared in March that year amid sug­ar belt labour strikes, which al­lowed the State to is­sue a de­ten­tion or­der for James to be placed un­der house ar­rest. James’ de­ten­tion end­ed on March 23, 1965.

The most re­cent high-pro­file house ar­rest case in­volved Oc­c­ah Sea­paul, who was then House Speak­er.

In Au­gust of 1995, Sea­paul, an at­tor­ney, was placed un­der house ar­rest at her pri­vate res­i­dence at Mary Street, St Clair, by then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning for al­leged­ly at­tempt­ing to usurp his gov­ern­ment’s au­thor­i­ty. Man­ning in­voked a lim­it­ed State of Emer­gency (SoE) to fa­cil­i­tate his ac­tion against Sea­paul, who was ap­point­ed the coun­try’s first fe­male Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 1992, a po­si­tion she held un­til No­vem­ber 27, 1995.

Be­fore this ap­point­ment, Sea­paul had al­ready made his­to­ry as the na­tion’s first fe­male Deputy Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) and the first woman in the coun­try to serve as Mas­ter of the High Court.

The house ar­rest last­ed from Au­gust 3 to 7, which be­came a ma­jor event in T&T’s his­to­ry.

On Au­gust 3, 1995, she was al­so is­sued a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) on three grounds up­on- on or about Ju­ly 5, 1995, with­out law­ful au­thor­i­ty, she amend­ed a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence put for­ward in Par­lia­ment by the gov­ern­ment, sus­pend­ed then Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Ken Val­ley on Ju­ly 28 for a pe­ri­od of six months with­out law­ful au­thor­i­ty and made a rul­ing on the ad­journ­ment of the House to a date pro­posed by her.

The Or­der stat­ed that the said rul­ing was made in favour of the mi­nor­i­ty mem­bers of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Based on her ac­tions out­lined, the Or­der stat­ed that the Speak­er demon­strat­ed her in­ten­tion to de­lib­er­ate­ly and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly re­duce the ma­jor­i­ty in the House to such an ex­tent that an usurpa­tion of the gov­ern­ment was im­mi­nent.

The house ar­rest was to keep Sea­paul out of the Par­lia­ment, which many felt was too dras­tic. There were al­so plans to re­move her.

But Sea­paul, who be­came en­snared in a rag­ing po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy, re­fused to budge.

To this day, Sea­paul main­tains she did noth­ing wrong.

The 1995 house ar­rest of Oc­c­ah Sea­paul re­mains one of the most con­tro­ver­sial and con­sti­tu­tion­al episodes in T&T’s his­to­ry.

This was the view shared by for­mer House Speak­er and at­tor­ney Nizam Mo­hammed as he re­flect­ed on the po­lit­i­cal im­passe be­tween Sea­paul and Man­ning that took place 31 years ago.

Mo­hammed re­mem­bered that a lim­it­ed SoE was de­clared in the vicin­i­ty of Sea­paul’s res­i­dence, and a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der was used to con­fine the Speak­er to her home.

Dur­ing that pe­ri­od, he said, the deputy Speak­er presided over the House, a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence in the Speak­er was de­bat­ed and passed, and the par­lia­men­tary con­sti­tu­tion­al im­passe was con­clu­sive­ly brought to an end.

“It’s a rel­a­tive­ly un­com­mon mea­sure to re­sort to house ar­rest. What­ev­er one’s view of the po­lit­i­cal cir­cum­stances of the day, that episode of­fers an im­por­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al les­son. It demon­strates the ex­tra­or­di­nary na­ture of pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion and the pro­found re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that ac­com­pa­nies its use,” Mo­hammed said.

He said a PDO is among the most in­tru­sive pow­ers avail­able to the Ex­ec­u­tive.

“It au­tho­ris­es the de­pri­va­tion of an in­di­vid­ual’s lib­er­ty, not as pun­ish­ment for a crim­i­nal con­vic­tion, but be­cause the State be­lieves that fu­ture con­duct pos­es a suf­fi­cient threat to the pub­lic in­ter­est or na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.”

Mo­hammed said some may ar­gue that the events of 1995 il­lus­trate cir­cum­stances in which pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion served to avert a con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis by pre­vent­ing con­duct con­sid­ered in­im­i­cal to the pub­lic in­ter­est.

“Oth­ers may re­gard the episode as a trou­bling ex­am­ple of ex­ec­u­tive pow­er be­ing em­ployed to re­solve what was a po­lit­i­cal dis­pute among po­lit­i­cal friends, at its core. Whichev­er view one adopts, the episode re­in­forces an im­por­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ple… pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion should nev­er be­come the or­di­nary re­sponse to dif­fi­cult po­lit­i­cal or in­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenges.”

In a con­sti­tu­tion­al democ­ra­cy gov­erned by the rule of law, the ex­is­tence of law­ful al­ter­na­tives is crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant.

Mo­hammed said be­fore re­sort­ing to pow­ers that sus­pend fun­da­men­tal lib­er­ties, every rea­son­able con­sti­tu­tion­al and le­gal av­enue should first be ex­haust­ed.

“In this case, where le­git­i­mate con­cerns arose re­gard­ing the con­duct of a con­sti­tu­tion­al of­fice-hold­er, the re­sponse should have be­gun with di­a­logue, per­sua­sion, for­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the full use of es­tab­lished par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dures. Co­er­cive emer­gency pow­ers should be re­served for those ex­cep­tion­al sit­u­a­tions in which no oth­er law­ful mech­a­nism is ca­pa­ble of pro­tect­ing the pub­lic in­ter­est or safe­guard­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.”

Even then, he said, the threat must be clear, com­pelling and ob­jec­tive­ly demon­stra­ble.

“There should be no un­cer­tain­ty that the dan­ger to the pub­lic in­ter­est or na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is both re­al and im­me­di­ate.”

Mo­hammed said in the 1995 in­ci­dent, while there was lit­tle doubt that Par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dures were not be­ing ap­plied in ac­cor­dance with the Stand­ing Or­ders and that the House had reached a con­sti­tu­tion­al im­passe, the un­der­ly­ing dis­pute re­mained, at its core, an in­ter­nal po­lit­i­cal con­flict. “That re­al­i­ty un­der­scores why the ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers of pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion should be re­gard­ed as a mea­sure of ab­solute last re­sort, to be in­voked on­ly when every oth­er law­ful op­tion has gen­uine­ly failed.

“The dan­ger lies not on­ly in the im­me­di­ate ex­er­cise of the pow­er but in the prece­dent that it cre­ates.”

He added that once pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion is ac­cept­ed as an ex­pe­di­ent means of re­solv­ing dis­putes that could oth­er­wise be ad­dressed through or­di­nary le­gal process­es, fu­ture gov­ern­ments may be tempt­ed to in­voke the same pow­er in cir­cum­stances that fall well short of a gen­uine emer­gency.

“The grad­ual nor­mal­i­sa­tion of ex­cep­tion­al pow­ers risks erod­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in con­sti­tu­tion­al gov­ern­ment and weak­en­ing the safe­guards de­signed to pro­tect in­di­vid­ual lib­er­ty.”

Mo­hammed ar­gued that the en­dur­ing les­son of 1995 is there­fore not whether the gov­ern­ment achieved its im­me­di­ate ob­jec­tive; it is that the co­er­cive pow­ers avail­able un­der emer­gency leg­is­la­tion must re­main pow­ers of gen­uine last re­sort.

“They should be ex­er­cised on­ly where the threat is so grave, and the avail­able law­ful al­ter­na­tives so clear­ly in­ad­e­quate, that no less­er re­sponse can rea­son­ably pro­tect the na­tion. To em­ploy pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion where or­di­nary le­gal mech­a­nisms re­main avail­able risks sig­nalling not the strength of the rule of law, but its fail­ure,” Mo­hammed said.

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to Sea­paul and asked if the re­cent news of the Hadeeds’ pro­posed house ar­rest had sparked mem­o­ries of her own ex­pe­ri­ence over 30 years ago, she said, “Peo­ple re­al­ly don’t un­der­stand me. Those things that have passed... have passed. I don’t live on dead en­er­gies, dar­ling. I am re­al­ly sor­ry. I re­al­ly don’t want to go through all those things again.”

Sea­paul said every­one must go through life’s chal­lenges.

As Speak­er, Sea­paul said she had to take the bull by the horns and deal with sit­u­a­tions “as you see fit” in the House.

The third in­stance of house ar­rests oc­curred in Jan­u­ary 2025, when the po­lice placed some sus­pect­ed gang mem­bers held dur­ing the then-SoE un­der house ar­rest.

Calvin “Tyson” Lee, who was tak­en in­to cus­tody on De­cem­ber 30, 2024, and ini­tial­ly held at the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion and not ques­tioned un­til his re­lease, was said to be in de­ten­tion at his home through or­ders is­sued by the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice.

At the time, ACP in charge of Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Op­er­a­tion, Richard Smith, said that of the 40-plus pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers al­leged­ly af­fil­i­at­ed with gang ac­tiv­i­ties, oth­ers were un­der house ar­rest, but he could not give any de­tails. Smith, when asked about Lee’s de­ten­tion, said: “Mr Lee was re­leased. How­ev­er, he is cur­rent­ly un­der, I would say, de­ten­tion at his home through or­ders that were is­sued by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice un­der Sec­tion 4C of the (SoE) reg­u­la­tions.”

It was nev­er pub­licly stat­ed how many sus­pect­ed gang lead­ers were placed un­der house ar­rest.