Hadeeds’ attorneys back in court today

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve were yes­ter­day giv­en a day to analyse po­lice records re­lat­ed to the duo’s ar­rests and de­ten­tion for an al­leged mur­der con­spir­a­cy, to de­ter­mine whether they will pro­ceed with lit­i­ga­tion over the is­sue.

The Hadeeds’ lawyer Dou­glas Mendes, SC, re­quest­ed the ad­journ­ment as their habeas cor­pus writs came up for vir­tu­al hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad.

At the start of the hear­ing, which was per­son­al­ly at­tend­ed by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ques­tioned whether their case chal­leng­ing their de­ten­tions be­came aca­d­e­m­ic af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der is­sued Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) un­der Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions un­der the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) against them on Sat­ur­day.

“It seems to be aca­d­e­m­ic mat­ters that touch and con­cern con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues not be­fore me at this time,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

“I want to en­sure that we do not utilise any more of the court’s time than is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary,” he added.

Mendes, who is lead­ing the cou­ple’s le­gal team, claimed that his clients be­lieved they were be­ing sub­ject­ed to a typ­i­cal or “run-of-the-mill” po­lice probe and were not prop­er­ly in­formed that their ex­tend­ed de­ten­tion was un­der the reg­u­la­tions be­fore the PDOs were is­sued.

He ad­mit­ted that they were ini­tial­ly held for 48 hours un­der the reg­u­la­tions but claimed they were not sub­ject­ed to ex­tend­ed de­ten­tion for sev­en days af­ter the ini­tial pe­ri­od end­ed and be­fore the PDOs were is­sued.

While Mendes ac­cept­ed that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) pro­vid­ed sta­tion di­ary ex­tracts, pur­port­ed­ly in­di­cat­ing that the cou­ple were prop­er­ly no­ti­fied of the ba­sis of their pe­ri­ods of de­ten­tion since their ar­rest last week, he re­quest­ed time to phys­i­cal­ly in­spect the of­fi­cial records be­fore de­cid­ing on their next course of ac­tion.

“We are con­cerned that an or­di­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tion has now been trans­formed in­to some­thing un­der the reg­u­la­tions so they can be de­tained longer than they nor­mal­ly could,” Mendes said.

“We are con­cerned that the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions are not be­ing used in good faith,” he added.

De­spite his reser­va­tions, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad grant­ed an ad­journ­ment un­til 10 am to­day to give the cou­ple’s le­gal team an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­spect the records ref­er­enced by the TTPS.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that af­ter the hear­ing, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, SC, who is al­so part of the le­gal team for the cou­ple, was al­lowed to view the TTPS’s records at the Spe­cial Branch head­quar­ters at Agra Court in St James.

The Hadeeds and a 69-year-old rel­a­tive, Star Sab­ga, were de­tained last week as po­lice of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ed search war­rants at their homes and of­fices.

The war­rants in­di­cat­ed that they were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mur­der.

The PDOs, which would re­main in place while the SoE re­mains in ef­fect un­til mid-Sep­tem­ber, stat­ed that they were be­ing de­tained over an al­leged plot to mur­der Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and MPs.

The probe al­leged­ly stemmed from in­tel­li­gence gath­ered by a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty or­gan­i­sa­tion that was not iden­ti­fied in the PDOs.

Hadeed is be­ing de­tained at the re­mand sec­tion of the Port-of-Spain State Prison, while his wife is be­ing held at the Women’s Prison at the Gold­en Grove State Prison in Arou­ca.

The cou­ple is al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Chase Pe­gus and Car­lon McLeod. The TTPS was rep­re­sent­ed by Ram­dath Phillip and Anya Ra­mute-Mo­han.