Privy Council to decide Hadeeds’ fate

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed, his wife Genevieve and their for­mi­da­ble le­gal team were left dis­ap­point­ed last night, af­ter Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh and two Ap­pel­late Judges grant­ed a stay of a de­ci­sion of three of their col­leagues to or­der them re­leased and placed un­der house ar­rest.

The stay was sought by lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, af­ter Ap­pel­late Judges Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar, Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er and Joan Charles up­held the cou­ple’s ap­peal chal­leng­ing a de­ci­sion by High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad to refuse their in­ter­im re­lease on Thurs­day.

De­liv­er­ing an oral de­ci­sion af­ter hear­ing lengthy sub­mis­sions from State at­tor­neys and the cou­ple’s lawyers at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain last night, Boodoos­ingh and Jus­tices Mark Mo­hammed and Ricky Rahim ruled that the bal­ance of jus­tice re­quired the stay pend­ing the fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion of an ap­peal be­fore the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil.

Boodoos­ingh said the po­ten­tial risk of the cou­ple con­tin­u­ing an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate key Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, if they are re­leased un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the po­lice, was greater than con­cerns raised over Hadeed’s de­te­ri­o­rat­ing health dur­ing his de­ten­tion over the past three weeks.

He sug­gest­ed the med­ical con­cerns could be as­suaged by State of­fi­cials fa­cil­i­tat­ing ac­cess to his spe­cial­ist doc­tors while he re­mains un­der de­ten­tion.

At­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen, who rep­re­sent­ed the TTPS and AG’s Of­fice, as­sured the court such ac­cess would be pro­vid­ed.

“I un­der­take to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons to en­ter­tain any re­quest that can as­sist with his health,” Ramdeen said.

Boodoos­ingh not­ed that the State had raised com­pelling grounds chal­leng­ing the first pan­el’s judg­ment and that an ur­gent ap­peal could be con­sid­ered by the coun­try’s high­est ap­pel­late court in the next two weeks.

He not­ed that the pan­el he chaired did not seek to over­turn their col­league’s rul­ing in favour of the Hadeeds or their de­nial of a re­quest for a stay pend­ing an ap­pli­ca­tion for leave to ap­peal to the Privy Coun­cil, which was grant­ed lat­er that night.

He al­so point­ed out that the de­ci­sion on the stay was not based on an analy­sis of the mer­its of the cou­ple’s sub­stan­tive law­suit al­leg­ing they are be­ing tar­get­ed by the Gov­ern­ment based on their eth­nic­i­ty and a move to ter­mi­nate their leas­es for parcels of State land.

He said con­cerns raised by the cou­ple’s le­gal team, over the lack of ev­i­den­tial grounds re­lied on by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der to place them on Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs), was not rel­a­tive for the stay.

At­tend­ing the hear­ing from sep­a­rate video con­fer­enc­ing rooms at the Gold­en Grove State Prison in Arou­ca, Hadeed and his wife ap­peared de­ject­ed up­on hear­ing the out­come, as they were both seen with their heads bowed and in their hands.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions in sup­port of the stay, British King’s Coun­sel Sir James Ead­ie raised con­cerns over the abil­i­ty of the po­lice to fa­cil­i­tate the cou­ple’s de­ten­tion un­der su­per­vi­sion at their West­moor­ings home.

“It is not dif­fi­cult to com­mu­ni­cate from the home with­out elec­tron­ic de­vices if there is a will to do so,” Ead­ie said.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that six po­lice of­fi­cers would be re­quired to se­cure the prop­er­ty, which has wa­ter­front ac­cess and two jet­ties.

Ead­ie al­so claimed that Hadeed’s need for spe­cial­ist med­ical treat­ment for sev­er­al ill­ness­es and a ge­net­ic con­di­tion did not out­weigh na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

“The so­lu­tion is to en­sure that he has prop­er ac­cess not to re­lease them,” Ead­ie said.

In his sub­mis­sions, Dou­glas Mendes, SC, claimed the first ap­peal pan­el was cor­rect in their rul­ing and their de­ci­sion to refuse an in­ter­im stay.

Mendes re­ferred to ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed by one of Hadeed’s doc­tors, who ex­am­ined him be­fore the hear­ing, and sug­gest­ed he may be left wheel­chair-bound if he does not re­ceive treat­ment for his neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tion.

Mendes al­so took is­sue with par­tic­u­lars pro­vid­ed by Alexan­der in re­sponse to Hadeed’s par­al­lel le­gal chal­lenge be­fore the State of Emer­gency (SoE) Re­view Tri­bunal.

In an af­fi­davit filed on Thurs­day, Alexan­der dis­closed a re­port from the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) which deals with a call log from Genevieve’s phone. The re­port claimed she was com­mu­ni­cat­ing with two men who are con­sid­ered per­sons of in­ter­est by lo­cal and for­eign law en­force­ment agen­cies.

Mendes pro­vid­ed an af­fi­davit from one of the men, Michelle “Tall Man Guard” Vic­tor, who serves as the se­cu­ri­ty guard and dri­ver for the cou­ple’s three chil­dren.

Vic­tor claimed he made the calls as he was tasked with drop­ping one of the chil­dren’s friends home and got a flat tyre on the re­turn jour­ney.

He point­ed out that the oth­er man, Oliv­er Alexan­der (no re­la­tion), is a re­tired en­er­gy work­er who runs a NGO in Ma­yaro and would oc­ca­sion­al­ly seek do­na­tions from the cou­ple.

Re­fer­ring to the Alexan­der’s af­fi­davit, Mendes not­ed that sev­er­al se­nior judges de­liv­ered speech­es at the NGO’s func­tions in the past.

“The slight­est bit of in­ves­ti­ga­tion would have led him to re­alise that the SSA was pro­vid­ing him with in­for­ma­tion that takes him nowhere,” Mendes said.

“It is non­sense,” Mendes added, as he main­tained the po­lice had pre­sent­ed no ev­i­dence to even par­tial­ly prove his clients were part of a mur­der con­spir­a­cy as al­leged.

While the State claimed an ap­peal could be swift­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Privy Coun­cil, Mendes not­ed that its reg­is­trar pre­vi­ous­ly said it would not com­mit to a date un­til they are ful­ly ap­prised of the na­ture of the ap­peal they are be­ing asked to weigh in on.

The cou­ple and a 70-year-old rel­a­tive, Star Sab­ga, were ar­rest­ed last month and then placed on PDOs.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad grant­ed them leave to pur­sue a law­suit al­leg­ing breach­es of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights but de­clined their re­lease on the ba­sis of pre­vi­ous cas­es, over the need for giv­ing def­er­ence to the ex­ec­u­tive on mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

In over­turn­ing Jus­tice Seep­er­sad, the first pan­el found he failed to prop­er­ly con­sid­er that the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter pro­vid­ed in­suf­fi­cient grounds to war­rant their de­ten­tion un­der PDOs for the re­main­der of the SoE, which ends in mid-Sep­tem­ber.

“A con­spir­a­cy to kill se­nior mem­bers of gov­ern­ment re­quires par­tic­u­lars of that con­spir­a­cy in or­der to jus­ti­fy pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion. It is not suf­fi­cient to in­di­cate that the first ap­pel­lant (Hadeed) has the means to car­ry out such a con­spir­a­cy if the con­spir­a­cy it­self has not been iden­ti­fied,” the judges said.

“Hav­ing the means to car­ry out a con­spir­a­cy or plan is not suf­fi­cient grounds for a pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion or­der,” they added.

The first pan­el al­so took is­sue with the fact that Alexan­der re­lied on in­tel­li­gence re­ports from an un­named na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agency in the PDOs.

“Vague as­ser­tions, there­fore, of in­tel­li­gence with­out ex­plain­ing how that in­tel­li­gence re­flect­ed the on­go­ing con­spir­a­cy and the de­vel­op­ment of plans, ar­guably did not sat­is­fy the statu­to­ry pre­con­di­tion for the ex­er­cise of the pow­er to is­sue the PDOs,” they said.

“Suf­fi­cient jus­ti­fi­ca­tion was re­quired to demon­strate com­pli­ance with the statu­to­ry pre­con­di­tions for the ex­er­cise of PDOs and to per­mit de­tained per­sons to at least know the rea­son for that ex­treme and dra­con­ian ex­er­cise of Ex­ec­u­tive pow­er,” they added.

The first pan­el al­so re­ject­ed claims that the cou­ple had an al­ter­nate rem­e­dy by chal­leng­ing their PDOs be­fore the SoE Re­view Tri­bunal.

The judges point­ed out that the tri­bunal can on­ly make rec­om­men­da­tions, which are not bind­ing on the min­is­ter.

Not­ing that Alexan­der had re­ject­ed pre­vi­ous rec­om­men­da­tions by the tri­bunal in re­la­tion to oth­er de­tainees, the pan­el said: “The ex­is­tence of the Tri­bunal there­fore does not con­sti­tute an ad­e­quate­ly ef­fec­tive al­ter­na­tive rem­e­dy.”

The judges al­so took is­sue with Jus­tice Seep­er­sad’s rul­ing that the cou­ple could be fi­nan­cial­ly com­pen­sat­ed if they are even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful in their sub­stan­tive le­gal chal­lenge.

The judges found that there was a low risk of ir­repara­ble harm if they are re­leased with strict con­di­tions, as the po­lice were free to con­tin­ue their probe and charge them if they gath­ered suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence.

In a brief in­ter­view af­ter the sec­ond pan­el grant­ed the stay last night, Se­nior Coun­sel Faris Al-Rawi sum­marised the ef­fect of the stay on his clients.

“In ef­fect, our clients have had a cake giv­en to them that they can’t eat. They still are the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of a judg­ment in their favour and that is that they should be re­leased,” Al-Rawi said.

He said he and his col­leagues were al­ways ex­pect­ing the Privy Coun­cil to con­sid­er the case and would im­me­di­ate­ly start work­ing on the fi­nal ap­peal.

“So, we con­tin­ue to work as­sid­u­ous­ly. The case has a num­ber of ram­i­fi­ca­tions to a num­ber of peo­ple but it al­so stands quite unique in its per­spec­tive be­cause there are some very unique fea­tures of the case,” Al-Rawi said.

“We in­tend to spare no ef­fort. We in­tend to push for the fruit that has been giv­en and award­ed,” he added.

Al-Rawi al­so said he would be seek­ing the med­ical treat­ment which the State agreed to fa­cil­i­tate af­ter it re­ceived the stay.

“He has not re­ceived one minute of re­quired ther­a­py,” Al-Rawi said.

“To­day, our med­ical ev­i­dence put be­fore the court by an ex­pert demon­strates that there’s been sig­nif­i­cant de­te­ri­o­ra­tion which could like­ly see our client end up in a wheel­chair. There is no cure for what he is bat­tling with and that he spent his en­tire life fight­ing.”

Asked about his clients’ re­sponse to the lat­est de­vel­op­ment in re­la­tion to them, Al-Rawi said: “I think that the whole world wit­nessed what hap­pened there. My clients are strong peo­ple. They re­spect the law.”

The Hadeeds are al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Rishi Dass, SC, Chase Pe­gus and Car­lon Mc Leod. The AG’s Of­fice is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Dayadai Har­ri­paul and ASP Ram­dath Phillip, the head of the TTPS’s Le­gal Unit.