SoE tribunal recommends Dominic Hadeed’s release from jail

Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­[email protected]

The State of Emer­gency (SoE) tri­bunal re­view­ing busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed’s Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) has rec­om­mend­ed that he be re­leased from cus­tody, find­ing that his con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was not nec­es­sary or ex­pe­di­ent in the pub­lic in­ter­est, ac­cord­ing to ap­peal doc­u­ments filed be­fore the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil.

The dis­clo­sure was made in an “In­for­ma­tion About the Ap­peal” doc­u­ment filed by the ap­pel­lants, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Po­lice Con­sta­ble El­don Cal­liste No 16601, in their ap­peal against de­ci­sions aris­ing from pro­ceed­ings in the Court of Ap­peal of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The doc­u­ment states that the SOE tri­bunal re­ceived writ­ten sub­mis­sions on be­half of Hadeed on Ju­ly 9 and heard oral sub­mis­sions at a hear­ing on Ju­ly 10.

The ap­peal, filed as JCPC/2026/0066, was is­sued on Ju­ly 21, 2026, and lists Do­minic Hadeed and Genevieve Hadeed as re­spon­dents.

The mat­ter is clas­si­fied as an Ap­peal As of Right be­fore the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fi­nal court of ap­peal.

Ac­cord­ing to the fil­ing, Hadeed sought a re­view of his PDO on June 28, 2026, by the SoE tri­bunal es­tab­lished to con­duct re­views and make non-bind­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to the Min­is­ter re­gard­ing the ne­ces­si­ty for con­tin­ued de­ten­tion.

It states that the tri­bunal on Ju­ly 19, 2026, rec­om­mend­ed to the Min­is­ter that “the First Re­spon­dent’s (Do­minic Hadeed) con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was not nec­es­sary or ex­pe­di­ent in the pub­lic in­ter­est”.

How­ev­er, the fil­ing states that the re­view has not reached a con­clu­sion, as the Min­is­ter has asked the tri­bunal to re­open its process.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, the Min­is­ter’s re­quest is based on the grounds that no rea­sons were giv­en for the rec­om­men­da­tion and that he was not no­ti­fied of the hear­ing of Hadeed’s sub­mis­sions or giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make sub­mis­sions at that hear­ing.

The State’s fil­ing al­so states that it un­der­stands a re­view was sought by Genevieve Hadeed but that, at the time of fil­ing, it was un­aware of the SoE tri­bunal hav­ing made an equiv­a­lent rec­om­men­da­tion in her case.

Guardian Me­dia has been in­formed that the SoE tri­bunal is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide de­ter­mi­na­tions on re­views in­volv­ing Genevieve Hadeed and Star Sab­ga (Genevieve’s aunt, who is al­so on a PDO) in the com­ing days.

The cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE) Re­view Tri­bunal in­cludes David Alexan­der(Chair­man), Ron­nie V Per­sad (Mem­ber), and Ma­jor (Ret.) Ar­den D Williams (Mem­ber).

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Hadeeds’ Bayshore home and ob­served no po­lice ac­tiv­i­ty.

It was lat­er con­firmed that the mo­bile unit or po­lice of­fi­cers were no longer sta­tioned at the com­pound.

The de­vel­op­ment came yes­ter­day, the same day the Privy Coun­cil list­ed an ap­peal by the State in the le­gal pro­ceed­ings in­volv­ing busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve Hadeed.

The State is chal­leng­ing the Court of Ap­peal’s de­ci­sion, which over­turned a High Court rul­ing and or­dered that the Hadeeds be re­leased from cus­tody and placed un­der strict house-ar­rest con­di­tions while their con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge con­tin­ued.

That rul­ing was de­liv­ered on Ju­ly 16 and the Hadeeds were all set to be re­leased and tak­en to their home, when the State chal­lenged the de­ci­sion hours lat­er.

The State sub­se­quent­ly se­cured a stay of that or­der while it pur­sued an ap­peal be­fore the Privy Coun­cil.

Sources fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter said Hadeed’s at­tor­neys are seek­ing to have the sub­stan­tive ap­peal be­fore the Privy Coun­cil heard as soon as pos­si­ble, giv­en the on­go­ing dis­pute over his de­ten­tion and the pend­ing out­come of the SOE tri­bunal process.

The Privy Coun­cil list­ing does not yet pro­vide a date for the mat­ter to be heard; how­ev­er, the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil re­cess­es for its sum­mer break on Ju­ly 31.

Do­minic and Genevieve Hadeed, along with Star Sab­ga, were ar­rest­ed on June 24. They were de­tained in con­nec­tion with an al­leged con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mur­der against se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. No for­mal charges have been laid.