SWWTU retains senior counsel for activist’s Labour Day arrest case

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al Michael An­nisette says the labour move­ment has hand­ed over all rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing the ar­rest and charg­ing of ac­tivist Alyssa Phillip on Labour Day to a se­nior coun­sel, who will de­ter­mine the next course of ac­tion.

Phillip and her moth­er, Camille Cares­quero, were ar­rest­ed dur­ing the Labour Day pro­ces­sion in Fyz­abad on June 19 and lat­er charged with mul­ti­ple of­fences, in­clud­ing re­sist­ing ar­rest and dis­or­der­ly be­hav­iour.

Po­lice have main­tained that the pair par­tic­i­pat­ed in what they de­scribed as an unau­tho­rised march af­ter al­leged­ly re­fus­ing in­struc­tions to dis­perse.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, An­nisette said the le­gal re­view is now un­der­way.

“Well, the se­nior coun­sel has got all the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion to do an eval­u­a­tion and they have to make a de­ter­mi­na­tion on the way for­ward. You know it is a process. All wit­ness­es, every­body, have to make state­ments and he will do the eval­u­a­tion and de­ter­mine the way for­ward,” he said.

Pressed on the iden­ti­ty of the at­tor­ney and when a de­ci­sion could be ex­pect­ed, An­nisette de­clined to pro­vide fur­ther de­tails.

“At this time, I pre­fer not to men­tion who is the se­nior coun­sel but it is a well-known se­nior coun­sel, and this is for ob­vi­ous rea­sons,” he said.

The de­vel­op­ment comes days af­ter the labour move­ment an­nounced it would seek con­sti­tu­tion­al le­gal ad­vice over the ar­rests, ar­gu­ing that the in­ci­dent rais­es broad­er ques­tions about cit­i­zens’ rights to par­tic­i­pate in Labour Day ac­tiv­i­ties.

An­nisette has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained that Phillip was per­son­al­ly in­vit­ed to march with the SWW­TU con­tin­gent and has re­ject­ed the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s po­si­tion that she was not au­tho­rised to par­tic­i­pate.

The Labour Day ar­rests have sparked wide­spread de­bate, with trade unions, civ­il so­ci­ety groups and po­lit­i­cal fig­ures ques­tion­ing the po­lice re­sponse, while the TTPS has de­fend­ed its ac­tions as law­ful and nec­es­sary un­der the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act.

The mat­ter is now be­fore the courts.