Hadeeds claim land dispute, ethnicity behind Govt action

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve are claim­ing that their clients are be­ing tar­get­ed by the Gov­ern­ment, based on their eth­nic­i­ty and an on­go­ing le­gal dis­pute over the ter­mi­na­tion of leas­es for State land.

The cou­ple’s lawyers, led by Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes, made the al­le­ga­tions yes­ter­day as they filed a ju­di­cial re­view and con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion chal­leng­ing the Hadeeds’ con­tin­ued de­ten­tion un­der the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE), over an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate key Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

The hy­brid case was filed days af­ter the lawyers grant­ed leave to do so by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad on Tues­day.

In the court doc­u­ments, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the cou­ple’s lawyers did not on­ly chal­lenge their de­ten­tions based on Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions (EPR) for the SoE.

They al­so claimed that the move by the cur­rent Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Gov­ern­ment to ex­tend the SoE last month was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, as it sought to tar­get mem­bers of the Syr­i­an/Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, a mi­nor­i­ty eth­nic group and Do­minic Hadeed per­son­al­ly.

They ex­ten­sive­ly quot­ed state­ments made by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie dur­ing the SoE ex­ten­sion de­bate in Par­lia­ment, in which he re­peat­ed­ly de­scribed mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty as “the one per cent” and ac­cused them of be­ing fi­nanciers of the now-Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and of steal­ing State land.

They sug­gest­ed that Je­re­mie was re­fer­ring di­rect­ly to Hadeed (D), as the al­le­ga­tion arose af­ter he pub­licly crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy in March and af­ter the Cab­i­net sought to uni­lat­er­al­ly ter­mi­nate leas­es to State land held by his Blue Wa­ters com­pa­ny in May.

They ref­er­enced a let­ter sent to Hadeed by Je­re­mie’s of­fice, in­di­cat­ing that the po­lice were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the is­sue of the grant­i­ng of the leas­es.

“The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al there­fore is­sued a pub­lic threat to the first claimant, who the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al per­ceived as a fi­nancier of the op­po­si­tion PNM from the Syr­i­an/Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty and hav­ing at­tempt­ed to take State lands, that the Min­is­ter would is­sue a de­ten­tion or­der to de­tain the first claimant if any threat was made to the life of the Prime Min­is­ter or the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al,” they said.

They point­ed out that the cou­ple and a 67-year-old rel­a­tive, Star Sab­ga, were on­ly ar­rest­ed last week based on “in­tel­li­gence” pur­port­ed­ly gath­ered by the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) through in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions, a day af­ter Hadeed threat­ened le­gal ac­tion over the ter­mi­nat­ed land leas­es.

“The is­suance of de­ten­tion or­ders by the min­is­ter there­fore ap­pear to have been part of a pre­de­ter­mined plan by the Gov­ern­ment against the first claimant on the ba­sis of his ad­verse com­men­tary about the Gov­ern­ment, and/or his race, and/or his per­ceived po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion, and/or his per­ceived sup­port for the op­po­si­tion and/or his per­ceived wrong­do­ing in re­spect of hav­ing ob­tained leas­es for State lands,” they said.

“Quite apart from the fore­go­ing, the claimants’ fi­nan­cial means and in­flu­ence were used as a ba­sis for de­ten­tion in the ab­sence of any past al­le­ga­tion of in­volve­ment in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty,” they added.

The cou­ple’s lawyers al­so claimed they found ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in sta­tion di­ary en­tries re­lat­ed to their ar­rests and de­ten­tion un­der the EPR, which they claimed showed they were not prop­er­ly in­formed of the ba­sis for such.

“The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has con­coct­ed and/or fal­si­fied records in its sta­tion di­ary and/or filed mis­lead­ing ev­i­dence be­fore the High Court in or­der to jus­ti­fy the de­ten­tion of the claimants,” they said.

Stat­ing that their de­ten­tions were un­rea­son­able and taint­ed by bad faith, the lawyers point­ed out that the TTPS could have used less dra­con­ian meth­ods to in­ves­ti­gate them if there was any cred­i­ble ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing, which they firm­ly de­nied.

“There is no and can be no ev­i­dence of any plot by the claimants to mur­der any per­son be­cause there was no such plot. There is no ba­sis for con­clud­ing that there was any ev­i­dence of any threat, re­al or per­ceived, against any pub­lic of­fi­cial,” they said.

They al­so con­tend­ed that Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der ab­di­cat­ed the ex­er­cise of his dis­cre­tion in is­su­ing the PDOs, as he failed to take in­to ac­count rel­e­vant con­sid­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing the cou­ple’s stand­ing in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, their clean crim­i­nal records, the fact that they have three young chil­dren, the ef­fect on their rep­u­ta­tions and busi­ness­es and their med­ical con­di­tions.

Through the law­suit, the Hadeeds are seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions, in­clud­ing over the le­gal­i­ty of the SoE ex­ten­sion and their de­ten­tions un­der PDOs.

They are al­so claim­ing that over a dozen of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were breached by the al­leged ac­tions of the TTPS and the Gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing their rights to equal­i­ty be­fore the law and pro­tec­tion of the law, equal­i­ty of treat­ment from a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty, to ex­press po­lit­i­cal view, free­dom of thought and ex­pres­sion, and not to be sub­ject­ed to ar­bi­trary de­ten­tion.

They are al­so seek­ing fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion.

In grant­i­ng them leave to pur­sue the case ear­li­er this week, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad re­fused to grant their re­lease pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the sub­stan­tive case.

“It is es­sen­tial to dis­tin­guish that even if their ar­rests and de­ten­tions were in­valid, such does not im­pact the de­ci­sion of the min­is­ter to is­sue the PDOs,” he said.

Al­though he ac­knowl­edged the con­di­tions in prison the cou­ple have had to and con­tin­ue to en­dure, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said they could be com­pen­sat­ed through dam­ages if they are even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful in their le­gal chal­lenge.

“While the court ap­pre­ci­ates the dis­tress from de­ten­tion, it does hold the view that there may be greater harm if they are re­leased and the in­tel­li­gence up­on which the po­lice and min­is­ter act­ed proves to be true,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

The Hadeeds are al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Rishi Dass, SC, Faris Al-Rawi, SC, Chase Pe­gus and Car­lon Mc Leod.

The AG’s Of­fice has re­tained British King’s Coun­sel Sir James Ead­ie and Robert Strang to rep­re­sent the State along­side at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen.