Hadeeds’ case draws international attention

The de­ten­tion of Star Sab­ga and Do­minic and Genevieve Hadeed has at­tract­ed in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion, with The New York Times pub­lish­ing a de­tailed ac­count of the case.

The re­port traces events from June, when po­lice raid­ed the Hadeeds’ home, seized elec­tron­ic de­vices, and sub­se­quent­ly de­tained the cou­ple and Sab­ga un­der the State of Emer­gency. It de­tails the con­di­tions they faced while in de­ten­tion, as well as Sab­ga’s ex­pe­ri­ence while un­der house ar­rest.

Ac­cord­ing to the ar­ti­cle, Sab­ga and Genevieve Hadeed were sub­ject­ed to in­va­sive strip search­es while be­ing held at the Women’s Prison in Arou­ca. They were housed in what the re­port de­scribed as un­san­i­tary con­di­tions with lit­tle pri­va­cy. Dur­ing the ap­prox­i­mate­ly six weeks Sab­ga spent un­der house ar­rest, she was per­mit­ted on­ly two 15-minute vis­its from fam­i­ly mem­bers.

The re­port al­so states that the US visas of sev­er­al mem­bers of the Hadeed fam­i­ly were re­voked. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie had pre­vi­ous­ly con­firmed in Par­lia­ment that mem­bers of the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty had their visas can­celled. The Hadeeds’ le­gal team lat­er con­firmed that their clients were among those af­fect­ed.

The ar­ti­cle places the case with­in the broad­er con­text of po­lit­i­cal ten­sions be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and mem­bers of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty. It notes that mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty, some­times re­ferred to by gov­ern­ing par­ty politi­cians as “the one per cent,” have been pub­licly ac­cused of cor­rup­tion and or­gan­ised crime.

Do­minic Hadeed had al­so been a vo­cal crit­ic of the ad­min­is­tra­tion be­fore his de­ten­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly on is­sues such as tax pol­i­cy and the can­cel­la­tion of a long-stand­ing state land lease op­er­at­ed by his busi­ness­es. Busi­ness­man Sam Sal­loum, who pub­licly de­fend­ed Sab­ga, dis­missed sug­ges­tions that she could have been in­volved in an as­sas­si­na­tion plot. Point­ing to her rep­u­ta­tion as an ar­ti­sanal cheese mak­er, he re­marked that she would not even “spray a bug.”

The Times fur­ther sit­u­ates Trinidad and To­ba­go’s use of emer­gency pow­ers with­in a wider Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can trend. It com­pares the lo­cal State of Emer­gency with mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed in El Sal­vador, Hon­duras and Ja­maica to com­bat vi­o­lent crime, while high­light­ing con­cerns about mass de­ten­tions and hu­man rights im­pli­ca­tions when gov­ern­ments are grant­ed broad emer­gency pow­ers.

San­dra Pel­le­gri­ni, Latin Amer­i­ca re­gion­al team lead at the US-based con­flict-mon­i­tor­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion ACLED, told the news­pa­per that crime re­duc­tion can­not be con­sid­ered in iso­la­tion from civ­il lib­er­ties.

“Whether you’re a crim­i­nal or not, you’re still sup­posed to be able to ac­cess a fair tri­al,” she said, warn­ing that gov­ern­ment crit­ics and pro­test­ers can be­come tar­gets when re­stric­tions on law en­force­ment are loos­ened.