Release of Sabga-Hadeed private convo sparks calls for independent probe

An au­dio record­ing ref­er­enced in an af­fi­davit filed in the High Court on Fri­day by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der is now at the cen­tre of an es­ca­lat­ing pub­lic de­bate over the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion of 69-year-old busi­ness­woman Star Sab­ga un­der a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO).

The record­ing sur­faced on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, two days af­ter Sab­ga’s niece, Genevieve Hadeed, and her hus­band, busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed, were re­leased with­out charge from cus­tody in con­nec­tion with an on­go­ing con­spir­a­cy to mur­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In the 15-minute record­ing, Sab­ga and Genevieve Hadeed are heard in a pri­vate tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion dur­ing which Sab­ga was open­ly crit­i­cal of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, her re­la­tion­ship with the cur­rent Unit­ed States ad­min­is­tra­tion, and the Gov­ern­ment gen­er­al­ly. Sab­ga ac­cused the Prime Min­is­ter of “de­stroy­ing the coun­try” and al­so made harsh re­marks about At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie and oth­er mem­bers of the ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Par­tic­u­lar ref­er­ence was made to com­ments made by Je­re­mie in Par­lia­ment on June 10 re­gard­ing the so-called “one per cent”, in­clud­ing his re­marks about “the news­pa­pers they own”.

Sab­ga al­so crit­i­cised Je­re­mie’s com­ments about the re­vo­ca­tion of US visas for mem­bers of the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty and sug­gest­ed links to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

At one point in the con­ver­sa­tion, Sab­ga said: “I don’t un­der­stand it. This is not go­ing to turn out nice, Gene ... some­body get­ting a bul­let in the head.”

She lat­er added: “Some­thing has to hap­pen for this to cool down ... and what have to hap­pen for this to cool down is the death of one of her Mem­ber for Par­lia­ment.”

In an­oth­er sec­tion of the record­ing, Sab­ga is heard say­ing: “The on­ly way this thing go­ing to end is when ah bul­let fly ... that is the on­ly way it is go­ing to stop.”

Alexan­der’s af­fi­davit, filed in re­sponse to Sab­ga’s con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge to her de­ten­tion, al­so refers to racial­ly charged re­marks al­leged­ly made dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion.

The Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter stat­ed that he in­struct­ed se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies to iden­ti­fy state­ments made by Sab­ga that, in the State’s view, cor­rob­o­rat­ed in­tel­li­gence re­ports con­cern­ing what au­thor­i­ties de­scribe as a broad­er plot to as­sas­si­nate the Prime Min­is­ter and mem­bers of her Gov­ern­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to Alexan­der, the ma­te­r­i­al re­lied up­on to jus­ti­fy the con­tin­u­a­tion of Sab­ga’s PDO in­cludes state­ments and au­dio record­ings ob­tained from Sab­ga’s land­line tele­phone and Genevieve Hadeed’s mo­bile phone short­ly be­fore their ar­rests.

Sab­ga has been de­tained at the Women’s Prison in Arou­ca since June 24. She was ar­rest­ed along­side the Hadeeds, whose PDOs were re­voked by Alexan­der on Ju­ly 23.

The pub­li­ca­tion of the record­ing by the Sun­shine on­line news­pa­per, on Fri­day night at 8:02 pm, trig­gered im­me­di­ate con­tro­ver­sy and raised ques­tions about how what ap­pears to be con­fi­den­tial in­tel­li­gence ma­te­r­i­al en­tered the pub­lic do­main.

State at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen told Guardian Me­dia that while Alexan­der had filed an af­fi­davit ref­er­enc­ing the in­tel­li­gence in­for­ma­tion, he was un­aware of the con­tents of Warn­er’s pub­li­ca­tion.

Yes­ter­day, Sun­shine post­ed on so­cial me­dia that there was a spike in traf­fic to its web­site fol­low­ing the ex­clu­sive re­lease of its au­dio, and lat­er re­moved the au­dio record­ing. How­ev­er, the record­ing was down­loaded and re­shared.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Sun­shine own­er Jack Warn­er seek­ing com­ment on how the record­ing was ob­tained. Warn­er de­clined to an­swer ques­tions, say­ing on­ly: “Re­gret­tably, I can­not an­swer your ques­tions.”

The dis­clo­sure has prompt­ed calls from Op­po­si­tion politi­cians and for­mer law en­force­ment of­fi­cials for an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young de­scribed the re­lease of the record­ing as trou­bling, while em­pha­sis­ing that he did not con­done racist state­ments.

Young ques­tioned whether the con­ver­sa­tion formed the ba­sis for the is­suance of the PDOs, ar­gu­ing that pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion was nev­er in­tend­ed to re­place the crim­i­nal jus­tice process.

“If that con­ver­sa­tion is the ba­sis of Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders be­ing is­sued and per­sons be­ing de­tained with­out ac­cess to bail and habeas cor­pus, it is a clear in­di­ca­tion that the Gov­ern­ment is vi­o­lat­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions,” Young said.

He al­so ques­tioned the le­gal­i­ty of the in­ter­cep­tion, ask­ing who au­tho­rised it, whether it was con­duct­ed un­der the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act, and how the record­ing even­tu­al­ly be­came pub­lic.

Young not­ed that dur­ing his tenure on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil be­tween 2015 and 2025, in­clud­ing as Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, he nev­er sought sur­veil­lance of any in­di­vid­ual.

He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of us­ing State pow­ers to tar­get po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents and re­newed his call for the State of Emer­gency to be lift­ed.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said the cen­tral is­sue was not the con­tent of the record­ing it­self, but the ap­par­ent breach of in­tel­li­gence se­cu­ri­ty.

“Whether the al­leged state­ments amount to trea­son, sedi­tion, con­spir­a­cy, a threat against a pub­lic of­fi­cial, or no of­fence at all, that is for the po­lice, the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and the courts to de­cide,” Grif­fith said.

He ar­gued that pub­lic con­fi­dence in in­tel­li­gence agen­cies would be se­ri­ous­ly un­der­mined if con­fi­den­tial in­ter­cepts could be re­moved from se­cure sys­tems and dis­sem­i­nat­ed on­line. Grif­fith called for an in­de­pen­dent and trans­par­ent in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine whether es­tab­lished se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols had been breached.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der al­so weighed in on the con­tro­ver­sy, say­ing the record­ing ex­posed what he de­scribed as race-based hos­til­i­ty with­in sec­tions of so­ci­ety. How­ev­er, he was crit­i­cal of Grif­fith’s in­ter­ven­tion, stat­ing that the for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er had “lost all moral au­thor­i­ty to speak”.

Ques­tions were sent to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro. Up to pub­li­ca­tion, no re­spons­es were re­ceived.