‘Totally unfair’: Families cry relief, anger as SoE detainees walk free

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

As tears of joy and re­lief streamed down their faces while they em­braced de­tainees re­leased from the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC), San­ta Rosa, yes­ter­day, rel­a­tives blast­ed the au­thor­i­ties as they ar­gued there was no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Heav­i­ly crit­i­cis­ing the Gov­ern­ment and se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies for their ac­tions over the past six months, sev­er­al peo­ple de­scribed it as “to­tal­ly dis­rup­tive,” “un­war­rant­ed,” and “a to­tal fail­ure.”

A moth­er who ar­rived at the ECRC from as ear­ly as 9 am, anx­ious­ly wait­ing for her son to emerge, could bare­ly speak as she wiped tears and said, “It is not jus­ti­fi­able.”

An el­der­ly cou­ple who trav­elled from their home in Fyz­abad to col­lect their 25-year-old son wept open­ly as they hugged each oth­er tight­ly.

Scores of anx­ious peo­ple lined Pin­to Road 3, which leads to the ECRC, from as ear­ly as 7 am, fol­low­ing the in­struc­tions of heav­i­ly armed po­lice and prison of­fi­cials.

All vis­i­tors and ve­hi­cles were thor­ough­ly searched, while a snif­fer dog was al­so used as part of the se­cu­ri­ty blan­ket.

Marked and un­marked po­lice ve­hi­cles were al­so sta­tioned at traf­fic in­ter­sec­tions along both sides of the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way, as po­lice kept watch.

A to­tal of 85 peo­ple, in­clud­ing sev­er­al fe­males, were sched­uled to be re­leased ahead of the ex­pi­ra­tion of the SoE at mid­night yes­ter­day.

A to­tal of 32 de­tainees were re­leased on Fri­day.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro con­firmed that 117 were to be re­leased, of the 151 that had been de­tained via the Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO).

Rel­a­tives of one of the de­tainees who ar­rived at the ECRC and had spent hours wait­ing to be called by prison of­fi­cials and di­rect­ed to dri­ve up and col­lect their loved one were left dis­ap­point­ed af­ter be­ing told he was to be charged and would not be re­leased in­to their cus­tody.

Po­lice of­fi­cers from the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion al­so ar­rived at the ECRC around 11 am to col­lect one of the de­tainees to be charged, fol­low­ing which they took him from the prison and left in a con­voy.

It was not known who that de­tainee was, nor were any rel­a­tives who lined the road in­formed.

A wife wait­ing on her hus­band, who had been de­tained for the past two months, said, “It was just so very hard. It wasn’t a nice thing at all.”

A woman said she wait­ed in the hot sun for her 30-year-old son, ques­tioned, “Af­ter all of this... you lock up peo­ple fam­i­ly, where peo­ple go­ing af­ter this?”

“You lock up peo­ple fam­i­ly for this pe­ri­od of time and then just re­lease them... ‘sor­ry’, that’s what you go say. They say­ing they want to keep the peace, and I ain’t say­ing no, cause I am a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen. But I am the moth­er of on­ly sons, and I does in­stall the cor­rect things in my sons, but I know my son was here. I don’t know for what rea­son, but all glo­ry goes to God.”

The moth­er of a 28-year-old man from Gon­za­les, who had been nabbed by po­lice as he walked to a near­by shop and had been de­tained for the past six months, re­vealed the dif­fi­cul­ties she had en­dured as a re­sult.

“My blood pres­sure went high. I couldn’t sleep com­fort­able. I wasn’t feel­ing good and end­ed up in the hos­pi­tal cause this is the son who does re­al­ly stand up with me. He is the on­ly one who does help me and take care of me.”

A fe­male rel­a­tive of one of the de­tainees said he was picked up at the be­gin­ning of De­cem­ber, tak­en from his home, whilst be­ing told in­ves­ti­ga­tions were un­der­way.

“He got a glimpse of the pa­per, but it didn’t state he was be­ing ar­rest­ed for any­thing to do with any par­tic­u­lar crime or a per­son of in­ter­est. They just said they be­lieve he was a pos­si­ble threat to the pub­lic and for that rea­son, he was be­ing held.”

In­di­cat­ing the fam­i­ly had been forced to step in and pro­vide fi­nan­cial and emo­tion­al sup­port for the de­tainee’s girl­friend, who gave birth short­ly af­ter he was held and pay his loans and rent, the woman said, “It is a re­lief he is com­ing out but it is al­so a bur­den.”

Asked if she felt the SoE was war­rant­ed and could be jus­ti­fied, she em­phat­i­cal­ly replied, “No!”

“I think it was to­tal­ly un­fair.”

To the au­thor­i­ties, she said, “You dis­rupt­ed hun­dreds of lives. This is just ridicu­lous. I want­ed to be a po­lice of­fi­cer, and the on­ly thing I didn’t do was the fi­nal in­ter­view be­cause I got my dream job.”