Star Sabga stays in jail as State gets stay of house arrest ruling

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Cheese mak­er Star Sab­ga re­mained in prison up to late yes­ter­day, even as a High Court judge or­dered her re­lease on house ar­rest while she con­tin­ues to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed over a pur­port­ed plot to kill key Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion yes­ter­day evening, High Court Judge Vigel Paul up­held an ap­pli­ca­tion from the 69-year-old’s lawyers seek­ing her in­ter­im re­lease.

How­ev­er, Sab­ga’s le­gal vic­to­ry was short-lived as state at­tor­neys ap­plied for an in­ter­im stay of the de­ci­sion, as was done when busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve ob­tained sim­i­lar con­di­tion­al re­lease from a pan­el of the Court of Ap­peal two weeks ago. The in­ter­im stay pend­ing an ap­pli­ca­tion be­fore the Court of Ap­peal was not op­posed by Sab­ga’s le­gal team.

Jus­tice Paul’s de­ci­sion on the con­di­tion­al re­lease was large­ly based on the pre­vi­ous rul­ing by the Ap­peal Court pan­el, which was stayed by an­oth­er pan­el led by Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh pend­ing an ur­gent fi­nal ap­peal to the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil.

The Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) against the Hadeeds were lift­ed by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der last week, af­ter the coun­try’s high­est ap­pel­late court said it could on­ly en­ter­tain the ap­peal in Oc­to­ber.

In his de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Paul ques­tioned the need for Sab­ga to re­main de­tained af­ter the Hadeeds were re­leased.

“If per­sons set to be at the cen­tre of con­spir­a­cy can safe­ly be at large, the court can­not see how the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion of this el­der­ly woman can be said to be nec­es­sary to pre­vent dan­ger,” Jus­tice Paul said.

Jus­tice Paul found there was no ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed by the State that Sab­ga took steps in fur­ther­ing the al­leged con­spir­a­cy to as­sas­si­nate key Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials af­ter she made state­ments in an in­ter­cept­ed tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with Genevieve on June 11.

“There is ab­sence of any ev­i­dence that she en­gaged in any con­spir­a­cy or en­gaged in any step oth­er than ini­tial con­ver­sa­tion. A case of on­go­ing dan­ger must re­quire more than in­tel­li­gence,” Jus­tice Paul said.

Like the Court of Ap­peal ruled in re­la­tion to the Hadeeds, Jus­tice Paul found that Sab­ga could not be com­pen­sat­ed if she is even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful in her chal­lenge over the grounds for her de­ten­tion on the PDO.

“She is an el­der­ly woman de­tained with­out charge. If at tri­al the de­ten­tion is de­clared un­law­ful, no dam­ages could com­pen­sate her for months in prison and dam­age to rep­u­ta­tion,” he said.

Jus­tice Paul found that Sab­ga could be eas­i­ly mon­i­tored by law en­force­ment of­fi­cials at her West­moor­ings apart­ment, based on strict house ar­rest con­di­tions. He al­so not­ed that she could be charged if the po­lice se­cure suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence against her.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on the ap­pli­ca­tion, Sab­ga’s lawyer Rishi Dass, SC, claimed the in­ter­cept­ed tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Sab­ga and Genevieve had been giv­en a “twist­ed” or “far­ci­cal” in­ter­pre­ta­tion by law en­force­ment of­fi­cials.

He not­ed that the con­ver­sa­tion took place af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie made com­ments in re­la­tion to the “one per cent” while pi­lot­ing a mo­tion in Par­lia­ment to ex­tend the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) by three months. “It came a day af­ter the AG’s at­tack on a mi­nor­i­ty eth­nic group in this coun­try. They were vent­ing in a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion, as any­one may do af­ter be­ing sub­ject to such an at­tack,” Dass said.

De­scrib­ing claims of a mur­der con­spir­a­cy as far-fetched, Dass said, “There must be ev­i­dence of con­spir­ing not just two women vent­ing among them­selves...Worse is said on po­lit­i­cal hus­tings every­day.”

“It is prac­ti­cal­ly a thought crime,” Dass added.

He claimed that while Alexan­der ini­tial­ly claimed Sab­ga and the Hadeed were part of a con­spir­a­cy to as­sas­si­nate key Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials when he is­sued PDOs against them, he sub­se­quent­ly claimed Sab­ga’s con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was nec­es­sary, as her state­ments had the po­ten­tial to in­cite vi­o­lence against pub­lic of­fi­cials.

“There is now the whole­sale aban­don­ment of as­sas­si­na­tion plot,” Dass said, as he claimed Sab­ga’s state­ments could not amount to sedi­tion, as they were not broad­cast to the pub­lic.

Dass claimed the state­ments linked to Sab­ga were ini­tial­ly as­cribed to the Hadeeds be­fore Alexan­der dis­closed a tran­script of the in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion last week.

“It casts a dark shad­ow on the in­tel­li­gence ser­vices of T&T if they can­not get that right,” Dass said.

Dass al­so ques­tioned the need for Sab­ga’s de­ten­tion while the probe con­tin­ues, as he not­ed that the po­lice were still in the process of analysing the elec­tron­ic de­vices of the Hadeeds, who were re­leased from PDOs last week.

“No elec­tron­ic de­vices were tak­en from Miss Star Sab­ga,” Dass said. He claimed Sab­ga lost 29 pounds while de­tained in prison over the past month.

“We are not speak­ing about the de­ten­tion of Ja­son Bourne (fic­tion­al spy) but a 69-year-old cheese mak­er,” he said.

Dass al­so ac­cused the State of leak­ing the record­ing of the 15-minute in­ter­cept­ed con­ver­sa­tion which was wide­ly shared on so­cial me­dia over the week­end.

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions, at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen called on Jus­tice Paul to de­ny the re­quest.

He sug­gest­ed that Sab­ga could not seek in­ter­im re­lease af­ter fil­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion al­leg­ing a breach of her rights and should have sought to ju­di­cial re­view Alexan­der’s de­ci­sion to dis­re­gard the de­ci­sion of the SoE Re­view Tri­bunal to rec­om­mend her re­lease.

He not­ed that a Court of Ap­peal pan­el or­dered the Hadeeds’ con­di­tion­al re­lease be­fore the SoE Re­view Tri­bunal rec­om­mend­ed that their and Sab­ga’s de­ten­tions should be lift­ed.

“The court is be­ing asked to grant in­ter­im re­lief in a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion, while the min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion un­der the con­sti­tu­tion re­mains in­tact. Re­lief un­der the con­sti­tu­tion is dis­cre­tionary,” Ramdeen said.

Ramdeen al­so called on Jus­tice Paul to de­cline to sec­ond guess the risk as­sess­ment done by Alexan­der, the po­lice and the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA).

“Judges do not have ju­ris­dic­tion to as­sess the as­sess­ments of in­tel­li­gence ser­vices. The Ju­di­cia­ry is not qual­i­fied to un­der­take as­sess­ments of risks,” Ramdeen said.

“Is it per­mis­si­ble for the Ju­di­cia­ry to tres­pass on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed realm of the ex­ec­u­tive?” Ramdeen asked.

He al­so called on Jus­tice Paul to give def­er­ence to Alexan­der’s as­sess­ment, based on his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in re­la­tion to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sues and his role in is­su­ing PDOs un­der the SoE.

“If you take the de­ci­sion to re­lease the ap­pli­cant and to­mor­row the Prime Min­is­ter is ex­e­cut­ed, are you re­spon­si­ble to the elec­torate?” he said.

The trio was ar­rest­ed on June 24 based on pur­port­ed in­tel­li­gence gath­ered by the SSA.

The cou­ple’s bid for in­ter­im re­lease was ini­tial­ly blocked by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad, lead­ing to a myr­i­ad of le­gal chal­lenges, in­clud­ing those be­fore Jus­tice Paul.

The Hadeeds have filed a law­suit al­leg­ing they are be­ing tar­get­ed by the Gov­ern­ment based on their eth­nic­i­ty and a le­gal chal­lenge over a move to ter­mi­nate their leas­es for State land.

The Hadeeds and Sab­ga are al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Dou­glas Mendes, SC, Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Faris Al-Rawi, SC, Dhe­men­dra Pun­wasee, Jerome Ra­j­coomar, Chase Pe­gus and Car­lon Mc Leod.

Alexan­der, the AG’s Of­fice and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by British King’s Coun­sel Sir James Ead­ie, Dayadai Har­ri­paul and ASP Ram­dath Phillip.