PM: Former detainees’ lawsuits may fail under PDO rules

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

As the Prison Ser­vice con­tin­ues re­leas­ing high-risk de­tainees to­day, a process that be­gan yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she be­lieves law­suits by for­mer de­tainees may not be suc­cess­ful.

“In my re­spect­ful view, those chal­lenges may not be very suc­cess­ful be­cause the reg­u­la­tions them­selves had giv­en a rid­er (caveat) in terms of what you could come to sue for or not,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said while speak­ing to re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

She added: “What I could say is that we still live in a democ­ra­cy, we are gov­erned by the rule of law, and every­body has ac­cess to the courts of the land. So, I will leave it up to the courts.”

Her com­ments came as rel­a­tives of for­mer de­tainees said they are plan­ning to sue the State af­ter their loved ones were held with­out charge for months.

At the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC) yes­ter­day, rel­a­tives of those be­ing re­leased were pho­tographed, along with their iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards and li­cence plates.

While there ap­peared to be less man­pow­er, the num­ber of cars lin­ing Pin­to Road No 3, lead­ing to the ECRC, was far few­er than on oth­er days.

A drone hov­ered above the check­point, an added se­cu­ri­ty fea­ture, along with a dou­ble check­point be­fore ve­hi­cles were al­lowed to en­ter to col­lect the re­leased de­tainees.

At the Gold­en Grove Prison in Arou­ca, rel­a­tives of Dwight Yorke, the man ac­cused of rob­bing the daugh­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, said the April ar­rest was an act of vin­dic­tive­ness.

A fe­male rel­a­tive, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said Yorke, who was de­tained while on a par­ty boat, was beat­en while in prison and is con­sid­er­ing tak­ing le­gal ac­tion against the State.

An­oth­er de­tainee’s rel­a­tive, who al­so did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said her 24-year-old grand­son lost his job af­ter he was de­tained and will now be re­leased with­out charge.

“That SoE cost him his job. It would nev­er be a good feel­ing. Yuh un­der­stand? It could nev­er be a good feel­ing. I just find it is un­fair to the gen­er­al pub­lic. It is very un­fair.”

She said her grand­son spent six months in prison and was fired from his job as a de­liv­ery dri­ver.

Asked whether he should be com­pen­sat­ed or giv­en an apol­o­gy, the woman said she would get her jus­tice from God.

She added that God would re­ward those who do wrong ac­cord­ing­ly.

“You can’t do hu­man be­ings this type of thing. We are all hu­man. The Bible tells yuh, what you don’t like for your­self, don’t do to oth­ers. They have to face their God and their pun­ish­ment and their judge­ment.”

Told that the po­lice had promised to con­tin­ue their in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the al­le­ga­tions that led to the de­tainees be­ing held, the woman said she had lit­tle con­fi­dence in the Po­lice Ser­vice’s abil­i­ty to con­duct thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

“I don’t re­al­ly have too much con­fi­dence in them be­cause it’s mankind and, you know, you could nev­er trust man 100 per cent. But I just hope and pray that they do their job, and they do it the hon­est way.”

The woman al­so of­fered a word of ad­vice to the Gov­ern­ment: “Be fair to the cit­i­zens. We would like them to think about God be­cause He’s the one who gives us life. I would like them to do the right thing. I would not like them to be vin­dic­tive, but to have the cit­i­zens’ in­ter­ests at heart and do what is right and cor­rect, es­pe­cial­ly in the sight of God.”