Release them now! Lawyer for SoE detainees demands urgent apology, compensation from State for not filing charges

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Charge or re­lease them and apol­o­gise! This was the call made yes­ter­day by an at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als de­tained un­der the State of Emer­gency (SoE), who ques­tioned its ef­fec­tive­ness as it is set to ex­pire on Jan­u­ary 31.

Criston Williams has al­so called on Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to is­sue a pub­lic apol­o­gy to the na­tion and to those de­tained but not charged when the process comes to an end.

De­scrib­ing his eight clients as “bit­ter and an­gry” over their con­tin­ued de­ten­tion, Williams chal­lenged the TTPS to pro­vide ev­i­dence link­ing the de­ten­tion of the 144 in­di­vid­u­als to the de­cline in mur­ders and oth­er crimes. He not­ed that se­ri­ous ac­cu­sa­tions had been made against those de­tained and em­pha­sised that the au­thor­i­ties have had six months to in­ves­ti­gate and press charges.

Williams said, “The TTPS was giv­en lee­way un­der the SoE to de­tain per­sons yet failed to lay charges. Un­til any­one is charged, it will on­ly re­main al­le­ga­tions.”

He lament­ed that dur­ing this time, “lives have been de­stroyed.”

The at­tor­ney added that the de­ten­tion could be blamed for, “per­pet­u­at­ing the break­down and de­struc­tion of fam­i­ly life, as well as the pos­si­bil­i­ty of changes in be­hav­iour in a short time frame.”

Williams, speak­ing on be­half of his clients and an­tic­i­pat­ing sim­i­lar claims from oth­er de­tainees, said they in­tend to pe­ti­tion the Pres­i­dent for com­pen­sa­tion from pub­lic funds due to the loss­es they have suf­fered.

“All our clients in­tend to pe­ti­tion the Pres­i­dent to pay com­pen­sa­tion out of pub­lic funds as they have suf­fered loss or dam­age,” he said.

Sec­tion 6 of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions 2025 states, “No per­son shall be li­able to any suit or ac­tion in re­spect of any act done un­der law­ful di­rec­tion and au­thor­i­ty pur­suant to the pro­vi­sions of these Reg­u­la­tions, but the Pres­i­dent may in his dis­cre­tion or­der that com­pen­sa­tion shall be paid out of the pub­lic funds to any per­son up­on be­ing sat­is­fied that such per­son has suf­fered loss or dam­age by rea­son of the ex­er­cise of any pow­ers con­ferred by reg­u­la­tion 3, oth­er than sub­reg­u­la­tion (2)(j) there­of and reg­u­la­tion 4.”

Williams ar­gued that the au­thor­i­ties will have no choice but to re­lease peo­ple who have not been charged, as “there is noth­ing in place to con­tin­ue their de­ten­tion.”

He added, “They now have to pick up the pieces of their lives.”

One of his clients, he said, had lost his wife while in cus­tody, while an­oth­er re­port­ed­ly lost his home as his fam­i­ly could not have af­ford­ed to cov­er the mort­gage pay­ments.

“From the stand­point of those in­car­cer­at­ed, how ef­fec­tive has this SoE been?” he asked.

Mean­while, Williams said he al­so in­tends to seek re­prieve from in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights bod­ies in re­spect of his clients who were de­tained un­der the SoE.

Asked how he felt about the pro­posed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs) which Gov­ern­ment in­tends to in­tro­duce up­on the ex­pi­ra­tion of the SoE, Williams said the ef­fec­tive­ness of this, just like the SoE, would have to be seen.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie an­nounced plans to ad­vance leg­is­la­tion tar­get­ing high-crime “hotspots” with­out im­pos­ing a na­tion­al SoE, on Wednes­day.

Just as in Ja­maica, he ex­plained the ini­tia­tive seeks to main­tain the re­duc­tion in vi­o­lent crime that had been achieved dur­ing the SoE.

The pro­posed ZOSOs frame­work will fo­cus se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures on spe­cif­ic ar­eas while in­cor­po­rat­ing checks and con­trols, ju­di­cial over­sight, and time con­straints on the des­ig­na­tion of zones.

Williams said while it had proven suc­cess­ful in Ja­maica, Gov­ern­ment need­ed to prop­er­ly con­tex­tu­alise the frame­work in which it was be­ing pro­posed for T&T.

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted, “We can’t prop­er­ly cri­tique the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion un­til it comes to Par­lia­ment.”