High Court to examine legality of Teteron prison transfers

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

Al­most one year af­ter dozens of pris­on­ers were trans­ferred from the Max­i­mum-Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca to Teteron Bar­racks un­der the 2025 State of Emer­gency, the le­gal­i­ty of those moves is now be­fore the High Court, with at­tor­ney Criston J Williams ar­gu­ing that the case could be­come an­oth­er ma­jor test of the con­sti­tu­tion­al lim­its on ex­ec­u­tive pow­er.

The chal­lenge fol­lows a rul­ing by Jus­tice West­min RA James last Fri­day grant­i­ng re­mand pris­on­er Earl Richards leave to pur­sue ju­di­cial re­view pro­ceed­ings against the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al over his trans­fer to the mil­i­tary fa­cil­i­ty and the con­di­tions un­der which he was de­tained.

Richards, rep­re­sent­ed by Williams and at­tor­ney Aaron Lewis, con­tends his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were in­fringed af­ter he was moved from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison to Teteron Bar­racks be­fore the fa­cil­i­ty had been law­ful­ly des­ig­nat­ed as a prison. The claim al­so al­leges that sub­se­quent leg­isla­tive mea­sures could not ret­ro­spec­tive­ly val­i­date what was un­law­ful at the time.

The pro­ceed­ings come al­most a year af­ter de­tainees were re­lo­cat­ed to Teteron un­der emer­gency pow­ers, a move that sparked wide­spread pub­lic de­bate over the treat­ment of pris­on­ers and the ex­tent of the State’s au­thor­i­ty dur­ing the State of Emer­gency.

Court fil­ings al­so con­tain al­le­ga­tions that lawyers were sub­ject­ed to ex­tra­or­di­nary se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures while at­tempt­ing to meet with Richards. Lewis said he was in­struct­ed to wear a grey ny­lon draw­string bag over his head while be­ing trans­port­ed through the mil­i­tary in­stal­la­tion and, on an­oth­er oc­ca­sion, was told by armed, masked of­fi­cers that at­tor­neys would have to be searched and blind­fold­ed be­fore see­ing their client.

Williams said the case re­flects broad­er con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues sur­round­ing the ex­er­cise of emer­gency pow­ers and the State’s re­liance on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

In writ­ten com­ments ex­am­in­ing the im­pli­ca­tions of the Hadeed de­ci­sion, Williams said the rul­ing fun­da­men­tal­ly changed the le­gal ques­tion that aris­es when­ev­er the Min­is­ter ex­er­cis­es the ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­er to is­sue a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der. He ar­gued that while in­tel­li­gence sources and op­er­a­tional meth­ods may re­main con­fi­den­tial, the State must still demon­strate a suf­fi­cient fac­tu­al ba­sis be­fore de­priv­ing some­one of their lib­er­ty.

“The phrase ‘na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty’ has be­come the end of the con­ver­sa­tion for many peo­ple,” Williams wrote. “The Hadeed de­ci­sion demon­strates that this is not the law.”

Williams fur­ther ar­gued that in­for­ma­tion does not be­come in­tel­li­gence sim­ply be­cause it is la­belled as such and main­tained that gen­er­alised con­cerns, broad con­clu­sions and un­ex­plained opin­ions can­not sat­is­fy the statu­to­ry thresh­old for pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion.

Jus­tice James sim­i­lar­ly found that Richards had raised ar­guable grounds suit­able for ju­di­cial re­view, re­ject­ing the State’s con­tention that his com­plaints should in­stead be de­ter­mined by the State of Emer­gency Re­view Tri­bunal.

The judge held that the tri­bunal lacks ju­ris­dic­tion to de­ter­mine the le­gal­i­ty of prison place­ments un­der the Pris­ons Act or to de­cide con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tions aris­ing from those de­ci­sions.

Williams be­lieves the Richards mat­ter demon­strates that the con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ples es­tab­lished in Hadeed are al­ready in­flu­enc­ing new le­gal chal­lenges.

He said le­gal prac­ti­tion­ers across Trinidad and To­ba­go are ex­am­in­ing pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion or­ders made dur­ing the State of Emer­gency through the lens of the Hadeed rul­ing, with fu­ture cas­es like­ly to fo­cus on whether the in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed to the Min­is­ter was suf­fi­cient­ly par­tic­u­larised and an­a­lyt­i­cal­ly ro­bust to jus­ti­fy de­ten­tion.

Williams said such chal­lenges should not be viewed as weak­en­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty but as an es­sen­tial safe­guard un­der the rule of law.

“Pub­lic safe­ty and con­sti­tu­tion­al lib­er­ty are not com­pet­ing ideals; they are com­ple­men­tary oblig­a­tions that must be care­ful­ly bal­anced when­ev­er the State seeks to ex­er­cise the ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­er of pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion,” he wrote.

The Richards mat­ter has been sched­uled for a vir­tu­al case man­age­ment con­fer­ence on Sep­tem­ber 28, while the State’s ap­peal of the Hadeed de­ci­sion is ex­pect­ed to be heard by the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil.