Tearful Mohammed calls on attorneys to defend hundreds held under PDOs

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­[email protected]

As his voice cracked with emo­tion, for­mer House Speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed called on at­tor­neys to unite and form a con­sor­tium to fight for the re­lease of over 200 cit­i­zens who re­main in­car­cer­at­ed un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders dur­ing the State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Mo­hammed made the call dur­ing a round­table fo­rum en­ti­tled: “Cit­i­zens’ Rights, Free­dom of Ex­pres­sion, As­sem­bly and Protests in the SoE,” at the Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege, Val­sayn.

Mo­hammed, an at­tor­ney, spoke about the re­cent rec­om­men­da­tion by the SoE tri­bunal to re­lease busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve, who were ar­rest­ed on June 24.

“The next thing is, a min­is­ter ques­tions the ve­rac­i­ty of the rec­om­men­da­tion. And he was go­ing to court. So it was him­self fight­ing him­self at that lev­el. You have a tri­bunal to ad­vise the min­is­ter. They are do­ing their job. You do yours.”

On Thurs­day, the Hadeeds walked free af­ter the PDOs against them were re­voked by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der.

Mo­hammed said the Hadeeds are just two of hun­dreds of peo­ple who have been de­tained un­der PDOs. Last Sun­day Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that over 400 peo­ple are be­ing held on PDOs dur­ing the SoE.

Mo­hammed added the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple im­pris­oned un­der PDOs have come from strug­gling com­mu­ni­ties.

“And they do not have the means to seek re­dress,” an emo­tion­al Mo­hammed said.

“As an at­tor­ney, I am bound to de­fend the rights of peo­ple un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion. Where are the lawyers in Trinidad and To­ba­go? Can’t they come to­geth­er and say, no! no! no! For­get the mon­ey. We are go­ing to de­fend those who can’t de­fend them­selves.”

Mo­hammed al­so ques­tioned where Le­gal Aid was in all this.

Try­ing hard to con­tain his tears, Mo­hammed said as an of­fi­cer of the court he felt “im­po­tent.

“We are not in a nice place. Put your­self in the sit­u­a­tion of these peo­ple who are in­car­cer­at­ed.”

He said the poor con­di­tions of T&T’s pris­ons have been gain­ing a lot of con­cern with­in re­cent times.

“You know why? Be­cause three peo­ple from the up­per ech­e­lon of the so­ci­ety...they ain’t come from Mor­vant Laven­tille and they ain’t come from the hotspots.”

Mo­hammed said he was yet to hear “some­one say, wait a minute where are the lawyers of T&T. I am sum­mon­ing my broth­ers and sis­ters in the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty, come to­geth­er, we are go­ing to form a con­sor­tium and we are go­ing to rep­re­sent these peo­ple in the same way oth­er priv­i­leged peo­ple have been rep­re­sent­ed. And give them the pub­lic­i­ty as oth­ers have been giv­en.”

He said whether or not the coun­try is un­der an SoE, no per­son should be afraid of be­ing ar­rest­ed for talk­ing.

“We are not break­ing any law. The right to talk and the gift of speech is an ex­pres­sion of thanks to the Lord.”