Derek Achong

Hours be­fore his re­lease, a High Court judge yes­ter­day dis­missed a habeas cor­pus ap­pli­ca­tion brought by for­mer State de­tainee, Khalil Kara­math.Kara­math was among 16 peo­ple who were de­tained for more than a week in con­nec­tion with an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and three se­nior Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters.Jus­tice David Har­ris, pre­sid­ing in the Port-of-Spain High Court, dis­missed the ap­pli­ca­tion yes­ter­day af­ter hear­ing le­gal ar­gu­ments from Kara­math's lawyers and from the State for sev­er­al hours last Tues­day.

The ap­pli­ca­tion sought to make au­thor­i­ties jus­ti­fy Kara­math's de­ten­tion. Kara­math, 23, who is the son of late con­trac­tor Hafeez Kara­math, was ar­rest­ed by po­lice at his Palm Road, North Val­sayn, home on No­vem­ber 23.Last week, he was among 16 de­tainees who were is­sued de­ten­tion or­ders un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions of 2011 which sought to de­tainee the men with­out crim­i­nal charges un­til the end of the state of emer­gency, which end­ed yes­ter­day.

The or­ders were signed by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy and or­dered the men to be de­tained at the East­ern De­ten­tion, Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre, San­ta Rosa, where the men were re­leased late yes­ter­day. An­oth­er de­tainee, Ash­meed Choate, 56, an Is­lam­ic schol­ar of Princes Town, al­so filed a sim­i­lar suit in the High Court last week, with his mat­ter be­ing ad­journed by Jus­tice An­dre des Vi­gnes to a date ear­ly next year.

Both men al­so ap­peared be­fore the Emer­gency Pow­ers Spe­cial Tri­bunal last Fri­day to pe­ti­tion their de­ten­tion with their mat­ter be­ing ad­journed to next week.The tri­bunal, which was ap­point­ed by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie pur­suant to the reg­u­la­tions and the Con­sti­tu­tion, com­prised chair­man Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, and at­tor­ney Ra­j­man­lal Joseph.