Shocking twist to State’s conspiracy to murder case

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Close to one cal­en­dar month af­ter they were ar­rest­ed at their Bayshore, West­moor­ings home, busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve yes­ter­day walked out of the Gold­en Grove Prison, Arou­ca, where they were kept un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) while be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed in an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate high-rank­ing Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

How­ev­er, their rel­a­tive, 72-year-old Star Sab­ga, de­tained with them un­der the same al­le­ga­tions, re­mained in cus­tody. Her mat­ter is ex­pect­ed to be heard to­day.

The Hadeeds were re­leased af­ter the PDOs against them were re­voked by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der ear­li­er in the day.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease from the min­istry, Alexan­der’s de­ci­sion to re­voke the PDOs came af­ter a “com­pre­hen­sive re­view” of le­gal, med­ical and pub­lic in­ter­est con­sid­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Con­sti­tu­tion Re­view Tri­bunal and on­go­ing as­sess­ments per­formed un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions 2026 ex­ist­ing dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).

The re­lease not­ed that while the Hadeeds’ PDOs were re­voked, they were still the sub­ject of an ac­tive crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

De­spite this, the Hadeeds’ at­tor­ney, Faris Al-Rawi, SC, said the re­vo­ca­tion of the PDOs meant they were not un­der home de­ten­tion and did not have to seek the per­mis­sion of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er for move­ment and vis­i­tors.

He, how­ev­er, main­tained that sev­er­al el­e­ments of the al­le­ga­tions against his clients, in­clud­ing the in­tel­li­gence that prompt­ed their de­ten­tion in the first place, re­main un­re­solved be­fore the courts.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at his Al­tus Cham­bers on Aber­com­by Street, Port-of-Spain, hours af­ter the Hadeeds were re­leased, Al-Rawi out­lined the le­gal chal­lenges which un­fold­ed since their ar­rest on June 24. He said his clients had co-op­er­at­ed with in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers at all times dur­ing their de­ten­tion.

Asked about the phys­i­cal and psy­chi­atric well-be­ing of the cou­ple, he said while he pre­ferred not to pro­vide such per­son­al de­tails, the cir­cum­stances, in­clud­ing the al­le­ga­tions of se­ri­ous crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy, were dis­tress­ing.

“When you’re put in­to a po­si­tion of be­ing de­tained by the State on the type of al­le­ga­tions that have been made, need­less to say it’s a shock­ing ex­pe­ri­ence,” Al-Rawi said.

“It was out of the blue, it was noth­ing we could have pre­dict­ed and it is cer­tain­ly some­thing we would say is not true.

“To speak to their men­tal state, I am very care­ful about re­flect­ing on peo­ple’s per­son­al ap­pre­ci­a­tions for my own part, I would no doubt say it is ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult and it is some­thing that im­pacts the whole fam­i­ly.” (See pages 6, 7 & 8)

Al-Rawi said he was care­ful about his com­ments re­gard­ing the mat­ter, how­ev­er, point­ing out he had tak­en note of com­ments from so­cial me­dia users whom he said were not sym­pa­thet­ic to the cir­cum­stances be­hind his clients’ de­ten­tion.

In fo­cus­ing on the le­gal me­chan­ics of how PDOs can be used, Al-Rawi re­port­ed that the Ap­peal Court had re­it­er­at­ed the role of the courts in hav­ing over­sight on the mer­it of the grounds for which a PDO can be is­sued.

He said this was par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant for the Hadeeds and oth­er mat­ters, as it dis­pelled the no­tion that le­gal re­dress was not pos­si­ble un­der the SoE.

“There was the com­mon be­lief out there that once the SoE is on and once the habeas cor­pus is sus­pend­ed and the right to bail re­fused be­cause we are un­der a State of Emer­gency, that you could not ac­cess the courts,’ Al-Rawi said.

“Mr Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad and the Jus­tice of Ap­peal in both pan­els and to­day again all recog­nise, and we en­dorse the pro­pri­ety that the State is sub­ject to the su­per­vi­so­ry ju­ris­dic­tion of the court, so that is an ad­vance­ment of the ju­rispru­dence of T&T that helps us to get to where we are.”

Re­fer­ring to the le­gal ba­sis of the mat­ter cur­rent­ly be­fore the Privy Coun­cil, Al-Rawi ex­plained that ques­tions per­sist over the ve­rac­i­ty of the po­lice in­tel­li­gence that led his clients’ de­ten­tions, as he raised con­cerns over what the le­gal thresh­old would be to jus­ti­fy some­one be­ing kept in cus­tody.

He ar­gued that even with the need to pre­serve the in­tegri­ty of crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions, the State was still re­quired to dis­close some de­tails be­hind a pur­port­ed plot.

“When a PDO is is­sued, it is done by the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and it is large­ly done on the ba­sis of in­tel­li­gence. There is a pub­lic in­ter­est im­mu­ni­ty which says that you ought not to dis­close your in­tel­li­gence pub­licly,” he said

“That is not to say that you are not oblig­ed to put a cer­tain ob­jec­tive­ness in the grounds be­fore the min­is­ter and cer­tain­ly be­fore the courts.

“So, the main point for us was un­der the lib­er­ty of a cit­i­zen with the su­per­vi­so­ry ju­ris­dic­tion of the court, what is ad­e­quate by way of ob­jec­tive grounds to make a de­ter­mi­na­tion of a pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­der?”

Al-Rawi said the mat­ter per­tain­ing to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and de­ten­tion of the Hadeeds was not the on­ly SoE case en­gag­ing the le­gal team, as he said the de­tails be­hind their de­ten­tions were sim­i­lar to oth­ers whose cir­cum­stances were com­piled and sub­mit­ted to the court for con­sid­er­a­tion.

He not­ed that giv­en the scope of the mat­ter, it could al­so af­fect the op­er­a­tions of how PDOs are is­sued.

Ear­li­er this week, a let­ter, sent by at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Alexan­der to SoE tri­bunal chair David Alexan­der, sought to chal­lenge the tri­bunal’s pre­lim­i­nary rec­om­men­da­tions for the Hadeeds and their rel­a­tive Star Sab­ga to be re­leased from cus­tody.

The at­tor­neys, led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, had ar­gued that the min­is­ter’s right to be heard was breached be­cause the tri­bunal broke the rules of pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness.

When asked about this de­vel­op­ment yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi said he was aware of the cor­re­spon­dence but de­clined to com­ment fur­ther.

“Quite pe­cu­liar­ly, the State is su­ing the State on the work­ings of the tri­bunal. This is not the first time the tri­bunal has been in ex­is­tence un­der the State of Emer­gency. I will leave the State to fig­ure it­self out. I have no com­ment in re­la­tion to them at this point,” he said.

He al­so de­clined to state di­rect­ly whether the Hadeeds were con­sid­er­ing ad­di­tion­al le­gal ac­tion against the State for dam­ages re­lat­ing to their de­ten­tions.

How­ev­er, he did re­lay what his clients’ in­ten­tions were.

“They wish to clear their names, move on with their lives, they are up­stand­ing mem­bers of so­ci­ety, they are strong cor­po­rate par­tic­i­pants,” he said.

“They are not against any gov­ern­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go, let me make that ab­solute­ly clear and we will let the courts work that out. There is noth­ing oth­er than that.”