Release us from Teteron!

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing two men cur­rent­ly de­tained on Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) have chal­lenged Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der to jus­ti­fy their con­tin­ued de­ten­tions.

The le­gal team, led by Criston Williams, has ar­gued that con­sti­tu­tion­al breach­es and flawed statu­to­ry over­sight re­gard­ing in­tel­li­gence in­for­ma­tion used in the cas­es were be­ing used to jus­ti­fy the con­tin­ued in­car­cer­a­tion of Ra­jaee Ali and Earl Richards at Teteron Bar­racks, Ch­aguara­mas.

In ur­gent cor­re­spon­dence dis­patched to Alexan­der on Ju­ly 8, the lawyers called for trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty on the law­ful de­ci­sion-mak­ing ex­pect­ed of the ex­ec­u­tive.

“The con­tin­ued fail­ure to lay the an­nu­al re­ports re­quired un­der the Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vice Agency Act (SSAA) and the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act (ICA), notwith­stand­ing that in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and the use of covert pow­ers ap­pear to have formed a cen­tral part of the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion ad­vanced for the de­c­la­ra­tion of the State of Emer­gency and the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion, the ab­sence of those re­ports pre­vents mean­ing­ful scruti­ny of the in­tel­li­gence frame­work re­lied up­on by the State and rais­es le­git­i­mate con­cerns as to whether the statu­to­ry safe­guards in­tend­ed by Par­lia­ment to reg­u­late the ex­er­cise of such pow­ers have been ob­served,” the lawyers wrote.

Re­gard­ing the out­lined is­sues, the at­tor­neys called on Alexan­der to pro­vide con­fir­ma­tion of sev­er­al is­sues, in­clud­ing whether the an­nu­al re­ports re­quired un­der the SSAA have been pre­pared and, if so, the rea­sons for their fail­ure to be laid in Par­lia­ment. They al­so want him to pro­vide con­fir­ma­tion on whether the an­nu­al re­ports re­quired un­der the ICA have been pre­pared and, if so, the rea­sons for their fail­ure to be laid in Par­lia­ment.

The lawyers urged Alexan­der to take steps to en­sure com­pli­ance with the statu­to­ry re­port­ing oblig­a­tions un­der the SSAA and the ICA, and to ex­plain the ba­sis up­on which the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion of Ali and Richards re­mains jus­ti­fied, hav­ing re­gard to their sta­tus as un­con­vict­ed per­sons and the con­sti­tu­tion­al pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence.

They al­so pe­ti­tioned Alexan­der to re­con­sid­er the con­tin­ued ne­ces­si­ty and pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of the PDOs against the men and their de­ten­tion at Teteron Bar­racks.

Ali and Richards were re­mand­ed in 2015 while await­ing tri­al in re­la­tion to the in­dict­ment aris­ing out of the mur­der of Dana See­ta­hal, SC. They were trans­ferred to Teteron Bar­racks af­ter be­ing clas­si­fied as “dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals,” de­spite what their at­tor­neys ar­gued was a lack of statu­to­ry sup­port for that po­si­tion.

The lawyers said, “Notwith­stand­ing the se­ri­ous na­ture of those pend­ing pro­ceed­ings, they re­main un­con­vict­ed per­sons in law and con­tin­ue to en­joy the con­sti­tu­tion­al pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence.”

Pre­vi­ous­ly housed at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP), Gold­en Grove, un­til Ju­ly 18, 2025, when a State of Emer­gency (SoE) was de­clared, the men were trans­ferred un­der mil­i­tary es­cort to Teteron Bar­racks.

Their at­tor­neys claimed the trans­fer was ef­fect­ed with­out pri­or no­tice to any­one, in­clud­ing their fam­i­ly mem­bers, and rep­re­sent­ed a sig­nif­i­cant de­par­ture from the or­di­nary cus­to­di­al regime ap­plic­a­ble to re­mand pris­on­ers.

While sub­se­quent pub­lic state­ments by Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials al­leged that the men were as­so­ci­at­ed with what was de­scribed as a “rad­i­cal Is­lam­ic crim­i­nal gang,” the lawyers stat­ed, “Those al­le­ga­tions re­main al­le­ga­tions on­ly and have not been de­ter­mined by any court of com­pe­tent ju­ris­dic­tion.”

The lawyers had pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed that the de­ten­tion con­di­tions at Teteron were ma­te­ri­al­ly dif­fer­ent from those at the MSP. Le­gal pro­ceed­ings chal­leng­ing the le­gal­i­ty of the trans­fers and the con­di­tions of de­ten­tion were then filed. Among the is­sues raised were whether Teteron Bar­racks was law­ful­ly des­ig­nat­ed as a prison at the time of the trans­fers; whether the re­moval of first-di­vi­sion re­mand pris­on­ers from the MSP was in keep­ing with the Pris­ons Act and ap­plic­a­ble prison rules and whether the trans­fers un­jus­ti­fi­ably in­fringed their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

Fol­low­ing the com­mence­ment of those pro­ceed­ings, Alexan­der des­ig­nat­ed Teteron Bar­racks and Staubles Bay as pris­ons with ret­ro­spec­tive ef­fect from Ju­ly 18, 2025. While that or­der sub­se­quent­ly re­ceived par­lia­men­tary ap­proval, the men have main­tained that the ret­ro­spec­tive des­ig­na­tion does not cure the le­gal de­fi­cien­cies that ex­ist­ed at the time of their orig­i­nal trans­fer.

The PDOs were is­sued pur­suant to the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions and their de­ten­tions have con­tin­ued un­der the on­go­ing SoE frame­work.

Ac­cus­ing Alexan­der, as the min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, of fail­ing to lay an­nu­al re­ports on the op­er­a­tions of the in­tel­li­gence agency for sev­er­al years in Par­lia­ment, they stat­ed, “Con­se­quent­ly, there ex­ists no pub­licly avail­able statu­to­ry re­port by which Par­lia­ment, af­fect­ed per­sons or the wider pub­lic may as­cer­tain the agency’s ac­tiv­i­ties, pri­or­i­ties or op­er­a­tional out­comes dur­ing the pe­ri­od in which the in­tel­li­gence said to jus­ti­fy these ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures, was al­leged­ly de­vel­oped.

“Sim­i­lar­ly, the an­nu­al re­ports re­quired un­der the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act, which are in­tend­ed to pro­vide Par­lia­men­tary over­sight re­gard­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for and the use of in­ter­cep­tion war­rants, have like­wise not been laid for the rel­e­vant re­port­ing pe­ri­ods.”

Stress­ing that they were not ac­cus­ing any­one, the lawyers un­der­scored, “The in­tel­li­gence said to have jus­ti­fied the de­c­la­ra­tion of the State of Emer­gency, the trans­fer of our clients to Teteron Bar­racks and their con­tin­ued pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion has nev­er been ca­pa­ble of scruti­ny through the statu­to­ry over­sight mech­a­nisms es­tab­lished by Par­lia­ment.”

“Whether that in­tel­li­gence was ac­cu­rate, com­pelling or oth­er­wise is not the is­sue. The is­sue is that the statu­to­ry frame­work en­act­ed to pro­vide de­mo­c­ra­t­ic ac­count­abil­i­ty has, for sev­er­al years, re­mained in­op­er­a­tive.”

“The de­pri­va­tion of lib­er­ty un­der a PDO con­sti­tutes one of the most sig­nif­i­cant ex­er­cis­es of ex­ec­u­tive pow­er known to our con­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work. In those cir­cum­stances, trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and faith­ful com­pli­ance with statu­to­ry safe­guards are not op­tion­al con­sid­er­a­tions; they are in­dis­pens­able con­sti­tu­tion­al re­quire­ments which serve to main­tain pub­lic con­fi­dence in the rule of law,” they wrote.

The at­tor­neys called on Alexan­der to ex­plain the con­tin­u­ing fail­ure to com­ply with the statu­to­ry re­port­ing oblig­a­tions and to in­di­cate the steps be­ing tak­en to rem­e­dy those fail­ures.