Yvonne Ba­boolal

PNM Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds is pre­dict­ing that the Re­view Tri­bunal es­tab­lished to hear the cas­es of peo­ple de­tained un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions will be a waste of re­sources and mon­ey. Hinds, an at­tor­ney, is claim­ing that none of the ar­rests made so far, in­clud­ing those on Nel­son Street, were made un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions but un­der dif­fer­ent sus­pi­cions and laws by the po­lice in their nor­mal course of du­ty. He said ac­cord­ing to the reg­u­la­tions the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty had the pow­er to or­der the de­ten­tion of some­one if he sus­pect­ed the per­son was act­ing against the in­ter­est of pub­lic safe­ty. He is not an­tic­i­pat­ing ei­ther that the po­lice will find any­one to de­tain un­der the reg­u­la­tions.

"There is no emer­gency, no in­sur­rec­tion, no threat," Hinds in­sist­ed. He re­called that dur­ing the 1970 Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion and the 1990 up­ris­ing peo­ple were de­tained un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions. He said the on­ly threat to the Gov­ern­ment were street crim­i­nals who could be ar­rest­ed out­side the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions. Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the tri­bunal yes­ter­day, any per­son law­ful­ly de­tained dur­ing the state of emer­gency, un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, 2011, has a right to have his/her case re­viewed by the Re­view Tri­bunal.

Mem­bers of the tri­bunal ap­point­ed by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie to re­view the case of any­one de­tained dur­ing the state of emer­gency re­leased the state­ment yes­ter­day out­lin­ing the pro­ce­dure on how the tri­bunal may be ac­cessed. The state­ment added that any de­tainee who want­ed to have his case re­viewed by the tri­bunal shall make a writ­ten re­quest, signed by him or his rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and lodge it at one of the fol­low­ing lo­ca­tions:

• Reg­istry of the Supreme Court, Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain;

• sub-reg­istry of the Supreme Court, San Fer­nan­do;

• sub-reg­istry of the Supreme Court, To­ba­go; or

• sec­re­tari­at of the Re­view Tri­bunal, Hall of Jus­tice, Knox Street, Port-of-Spain.

When the re­quest is re­ceived, the state­ment said, the sec­re­tary of the tri­bunal shall prompt­ly no­ti­fy the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty of the mat­ter. It added: "The min­is­ter shall forth­with sub­mit to the sec­re­tary the grounds up­on which the per­son was de­tained. "The sec­re­tary shall then fur­nish to the de­tainee the grounds on which he was de­tained and no­ti­fy him of the time and place at which the re­view will be held to en­able him to present his case. "The de­tainee will be en­ti­tled to present his case to the Re­view Tri­bunal in per­son or through a le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

"The tri­bunal will sit at the Hall of Jus­tice, Knox Street, Port-of-Spain and the hear­ings shall be held in cam­era." The Re­view Tri­bunal, pro­vid­ed for in sec­tion 11 (1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, was es­tab­lished by Archie re­cent­ly. Mem­bers are Gilbert Pe­ter­son SC, chair­man, Deb­o­rah Peake SC and Ra­j­man­lal Joseph. Sec­re­tary is Paul Is­sac. The of­fice of the Re­view Tri­bunal is lo­cat­ed at the Hall of Jus­tice, Knox Street, Port-of-Spain.