Resh­ma Ra­goonath

At­tor­ney and for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sub­has Pan­day has writ­ten to Re­view Tri­bunal chair­man Gilbert Pe­ter­son to have sit­tings in south Trinidad. In a let­ter yes­ter­day, Pan­day called on Pe­ter­son to have sit­tings in South to "fa­cil­i­tate de­tained per­sons from cen­tral and south Trinidad" who might wish to have their de­ten­tion re­viewed. Pe­ter­son was ap­point­ed chair­man of the Re­view Tri­bunal pur­suant to Sec­tion 11 (1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion and Para­graph (2) of the Emer­gency Reg­u­la­tions 2011.

Pan­day con­tend­ed that the south­ern sit­tings were nec­es­sary since "a num­ber of my clients have been de­tained un­der the State of Emer­gency Reg­u­la­tions 2011."

Mean­while, in an un­re­lat­ed mat­ter, San Fer­nan­do mag­is­trate Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds yes­ter­day ex­pressed con­cern that the court had been left in un­cer­tain­ty as to how to deal with pris­on­ers who did not turn up for the court mat­ters. The mag­is­trate raised the con­cern while pre­sid­ing over a mar­i­jua­na traf­fick­ing mat­ter in­volv­ing broth­ers At­i­ba and Kevon Ja­cob. Both men were ex­pect­ed to ap­pear in court yes­ter­day where the tri­al in­to their June 8, 2004, of­fence was ex­pect­ed to be­gin. At­tor­ney Haresh Ram­nath, who ap­peared for both men, told the court that his clients had been ar­rest­ed dur­ing overnight raids in the Vista­bel­la/Mara­bel­la area on Wednes­day.

"You see why it is dif­fi­cult to is­sue war­rants for non-ap­pear­ance... One can nev­er tell what hap­pens be­tween 9 pm and 5 am (cur­few hours)," Ram­sumair-Hinds said. The mag­is­trate in­di­cat­ed that since the men were on bail, she would not give them a short ad­journ­ment date. They will reap­pear in court on No­vem­ber 1.