State’s lawyers in limbo after Hadeeds’ PDOs revoked

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the State will now have to con­sid­er the fu­ture of their ap­peal over a de­ci­sion by three Court of Ap­peal mem­bers to or­der that busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve be placed un­der house ar­rest, af­ter Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) against them were lift­ed by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der yes­ter­day.

Alexan­der’s de­ci­sion in re­la­tion to the cou­ple came hours af­ter the Privy Coun­cil in­di­cat­ed that it could not fa­cil­i­tate a chal­lenge to the Ap­peal Court’s rul­ing on their in­ter­im re­lief be­fore it (the court) goes on its an­nu­al va­ca­tion pe­ri­od next Fri­day.

The cou­ple then re­ceived pos­i­tive news yes­ter­day morn­ing, as the Ap­peal Court or­dered that their sub­stan­tive case, al­leg­ing that they are be­ing tar­get­ed by the State based on their eth­nic­i­ty and a le­gal chal­lenge over a move to ter­mi­nate their leas­es for State land, will be heard ex­pe­di­tious­ly by a High Court judge.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that in an email sent yes­ter­day, the Unit­ed King­dom-based ap­pel­late court’s Reg­is­trar in­di­cat­ed that the ear­li­est the ap­peal could take place would be in Oc­to­ber.

“The court does not wish to deal with the ap­peal in a rush in the last few days of the term, and that it ap­pears to use that the im­me­di­ate is­sue of the re­spon­dents’ con­tin­ued de­ten­tion could be ad­dressed more con­ve­nient­ly by means of an ap­pli­ca­tion by the re­spon­dents to lift the stay,” the Privy Coun­cil said.

The Hadeeds’ lawyers were re­port­ed­ly in the process of tak­ing the Privy Coun­cil’s ad­vice and were draft­ing an ap­pli­ca­tion to have the stay lift­ed when Alexan­der is­sued the no­tice re­vok­ing the PDOs.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the ap­pli­ca­tion would have been made based on a change in cir­cum­stance, as the stay was grant­ed by an­oth­er pan­el of the Court of Ap­peal led by Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh, large­ly on the un­der­stand­ing that the ap­peal be­fore the coun­try’s high­est ap­pel­late court would be heard ex­pe­di­tious­ly.

The de­ci­sion on the PDOs es­sen­tial­ly ren­dered the ap­peal aca­d­e­m­ic, as the cou­ple are no longer in cus­tody or re­quire re­lease on house ar­rest pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of their sub­stan­tive case. How­ev­er, the ap­peal may still be pur­sued, as the case deals with the lev­els of par­tic­u­lars the min­is­ter must dis­close in or­der to is­sue PDOs against cit­i­zens.

Short­ly af­ter re­ceiv­ing news of the Privy Coun­cil’s de­ci­sion, the cou­ple’s lawyers and those for the State ap­peared be­fore Ap­pel­late Judges Eleanor Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well and Joan Charles for a hear­ing of their ap­peal over the re­fusal of High Court Judge Vigel Paul to deem the cou­ple’s sub­stan­tive con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge ur­gent.

Dur­ing the vir­tu­al hear­ing, at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen, who is rep­re­sent­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, did not ob­ject to the ap­peal be­ing heard ur­gent­ly.

Ramdeen said while his clients were ini­tial­ly op­posed to the case be­ing treat­ed as ur­gent, they were now will­ing to fa­cil­i­tate such based on fresh med­ical ev­i­dence over Hadeed’s de­te­ri­o­rat­ing health and the cou­ple’s failed bids to se­cure their in­ter­im re­lease. He was care­ful to note that the State still main­tained that Jus­tice Paul was cor­rect to ini­tial­ly refuse the re­quest, as the med­ical ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed on be­half of the cou­ple at that time was not suf­fi­cient.

Ramdeen’s po­si­tion was praised by the ap­peal pan­el, which high­light­ed the need for their le­gal chal­lenge to pro­ceed ur­gent­ly.

“That is an ex­cel­lent ap­proach to the mat­ter. We agree the need for ex­pe­di­tion and not for time to be wast­ed be­fore the Court of Ap­peal,” Jus­tice Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well said.

Both judges raised con­cerns over Hadeed’s cur­rent med­ical con­di­tion.

Faris Al-Rawi, SC, who is rep­re­sent­ing the Hadeeds, stat­ed that while his client was med­ical­ly ex­am­ined by his spe­cial­ist doc­tors dur­ing de­ten­tion over the past month, he still had not re­ceived the nec­es­sary treat­ment and phys­io­ther­a­py to ad­dress sev­er­al med­ical con­di­tions he suf­fers with.

“His con­di­tion con­tin­ues to sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­te­ri­o­rate and can im­pact his mo­bil­i­ty and over­all health,” Al-Rawi said.

Ramdeen de­nied sug­ges­tions that he and State of­fi­cials were seek­ing to block Hadeed from re­ceiv­ing med­ical care.

“I am not here in any hap­pi­ness by see­ing the con­di­tion of Mr and Mrs Hadeed,” Ramdeen said.

He claimed the Hadeeds’ lawyers had failed to pro­pose a treat­ment plan and sched­ule which could be fa­cil­i­tat­ed.

Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well re­mind­ed the par­ties that CJ Boodoos­ingh and two col­leagues had or­dered the State to fa­cil­i­tate med­ical treat­ment for Hadeed when they grant­ed a stay of an or­der is­sued by three col­leagues di­rect­ing that they be placed on house ar­rest last Fri­day.

“We urge you to work to­geth­er to get it done...If it is not, it would be con­tempt and could en­dan­ger their lives,” Jus­tice Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well said.

In or­der­ing that the sub­stan­tive case be­fore Jus­tice Paul be ex­pe­dit­ed, the ap­peal pan­el not­ed that he (Jus­tice Paul) would have to de­cide whether he would con­tin­ue to pre­side over the case or trans­fer it to a col­league who has been as­signed to work through the court’s an­nu­al va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, which be­gins next month.

The case is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing to­day be­fore Jus­tice Paul.

The cou­ple and 70-year-old rel­a­tive Star Sab­ga were ar­rest­ed late last month based on pur­port­ed in­tel­li­gence gath­ered by the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA).

The cou­ple’s bid for in­ter­im re­lease was ini­tial­ly blocked by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad. Al­though he ac­knowl­edged the con­di­tions in prison the cou­ple have had to en­dure, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said they could be com­pen­sat­ed through dam­ages if they are even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful in their le­gal chal­lenge.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment late last week, Ap­pel­late Judges Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar, Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er and Joan Charles found that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad was wrong.

In their judg­ment, the ap­peal pan­el said Jus­tice Seep­er­sad could not be fault­ed for giv­ing def­er­ence to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns raised by the State. How­ev­er, they found that he failed to prop­er­ly con­sid­er that Alexan­der pro­vid­ed in­suf­fi­cient grounds to war­rant their de­ten­tion un­der the PDOs.

“A con­spir­a­cy to kill se­nior mem­bers of gov­ern­ment re­quires par­tic­u­lars of that con­spir­a­cy in or­der to jus­ti­fy pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion. It is not suf­fi­cient to in­di­cate that the first ap­pel­lant (Hadeed) has the means to car­ry out such a con­spir­a­cy if the con­spir­a­cy it­self has not been iden­ti­fied,” the judges said.

The pan­el al­so took is­sue with the fact that Alexan­der re­lied on in­tel­li­gence re­ports in the PDOs.

The State then ob­tained a stay of the judg­ment pend­ing a fi­nal ap­peal to the Privy Coun­cil from an­oth­er Ap­peal Court pan­el led by Chief Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh.

CJ Boodoos­ingh and Jus­tices Mark Mo­hammed and Ricky Rahim ruled that the bal­ance of jus­tice re­quired the stay pend­ing the fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion of an ap­peal be­fore the coun­try’s high­est ap­pel­late court.

Like Jus­tice Seep­er­sad, CJ Boodoos­ingh stat­ed that the po­ten­tial risk of the cou­ple con­tin­u­ing an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate key Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials if they are re­leased un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the po­lice was greater than con­cerns raised over Hadeed’s de­te­ri­o­rat­ing health since be­ing de­tained. He sug­gest­ed that the med­ical con­cerns could be as­suaged by State of­fi­cials fa­cil­i­tat­ing ac­cess to his spe­cial­ist doc­tors while he re­mains un­der de­ten­tion.

The TTPS and the AG’s Of­fice then filed the ap­peal al­leg­ing that the first pan­el made three ma­jor er­rors in weigh­ing in on the Hadeeds’ ap­peal.

In the sub­stan­tive case, the cou­ple’s lawyers have not on­ly chal­lenged their de­ten­tions based on PDOs un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions (EPR) for the SoE.

They al­so claimed the move by the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Gov­ern­ment to ex­tend the SoE last month was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al as it sought to tar­get mem­bers of the Syr­i­an/Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, a mi­nor­i­ty eth­nic group, and Hadeed per­son­al­ly.

They ex­ten­sive­ly quot­ed state­ments made by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, SC, dur­ing the SoE ex­ten­sion de­bate in Par­lia­ment, in which he re­peat­ed­ly de­scribed mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty as “the one per cent” and ac­cused them of be­ing fi­nanciers of the now-Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and of steal­ing state land. They sug­gest­ed Je­re­mie was re­fer­ring di­rect­ly to Hadeed, as the al­le­ga­tion arose af­ter he pub­licly crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy in March and af­ter the Cab­i­net sought to uni­lat­er­al­ly ter­mi­nate leas­es to State land held by his Blue Wa­ters Lim­it­ed in May.

They ref­er­enced a let­ter sent to Hadeed by Je­re­mie’s of­fice in­di­cat­ing that the po­lice were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the is­sue of the grant­i­ng of the leas­es. They point­ed out that the cou­ple and their rel­a­tive were on­ly ar­rest­ed based on “in­tel­li­gence” pur­port­ed­ly gath­ered by the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) through in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions, a day af­ter Hadeed threat­ened le­gal ac­tion over the ter­mi­nat­ed leas­es.

Through the law­suit, the Hadeeds are seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions, in­clud­ing over the le­gal­i­ty of the SoE ex­ten­sion and their de­ten­tions un­der PDOs. They are al­so claim­ing that over a dozen of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were breached by the al­leged ac­tions of the TTPS and the Gov­ern­ment and are seek­ing fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion.

On Sun­day, the SoE Re­view Tri­bunal rec­om­mend­ed the re­lease of the Hadeeds and Sab­ga.

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Alexan­der, led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, wrote to the tri­bunal call­ing on it to with­draw its rec­om­men­da­tions and give him (Alexan­der) an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to the chal­lenges.

The Hadeeds are al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Dou­glas Mendes, SC, Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Rishi Dass, SC, Chase Pe­gus and Car­lon Mc Leod.

The AG’s Of­fice and TTPS are al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by British King’s Coun­sel Sir James Ead­ie, Dayadai Har­ri­paul and ASP Ram­dath Phillip.