Hadeeds lose legal challenge; to remain in detention

Derek Achong

Busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve have lost their bid to se­cure their free­dom while they pur­sue a case chal­leng­ing their de­ten­tion un­der the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) over an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate key gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion, a short while ago, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad re­ject­ed the cou­ple’s ap­pli­ca­tion to be re­leased pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of a ju­di­cial re­view law­suit over Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) is­sued against them days af­ter their ar­rest, last week.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad found that the cou­ple’s lawyers led by Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes failed to prove ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the PDOs is­sued by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der.

He found that while they claimed that they were nev­er in­formed that they were be­ing held un­der Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions for SoE, sta­tion di­ary ex­tracts sup­plied by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) showed that they were.

“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 that they could be com­pen­sat­ed through dam­ages if they are even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful in their le­gal chal­lenge.

He al­so re­ject­ed claims that Alexan­der should have giv­en the cou­ple an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard be­fore is­su­ing the PDOs as he sug­gest­ed that such a re­quire­ment would be ir­reg­u­lar and im­prac­ti­cal in the cir­cum­stances of an SoE.

“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.

As part of his de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered the Hadeeds to pay the le­gal costs in­curred by the TTPS in de­fend­ing the lit­i­ga­tion.

He al­so agreed to trans­fer their case to an­oth­er judge based on him de­liv­er­ing pre­lim­i­nary find­ings.

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 al­leged­ly mur­der Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and MPs.

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

Both Hadeeds are be­ing held in at the Gold­en Grove 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.