Geisha Kow­lessar

The State can ex­pect an­oth­er avalanche of law­suits as two lead­ing se­nior at­tor­neys be­lieve mil­lions can be forked out to pay 16 de­tainees who were or­dered to be freed yes­ter­day due to a lack of ev­i­dence.At­tor­neys Bindra Dols­ing and Mar­tin George said the men were slapped with de­ten­tion or­ders re­gard­ing the most se­ri­ous of charges and since there was no ev­i­dence to link them to the al­le­ga­tions the mat­ter au­to­mat­i­cal­ly opened a can of worms.

The State claimed the 16 were de­tained af­ter hatch­ing a plot to as­sas­si­nate Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma.Ac­cord­ing to Dols­ingh, hold­ing the sus­pects on sus­pi­cion alone was in­suf­fi­cient.

He said: "In or­der to de­tain there must be rea­son­able and prob­a­bly cause to de­tain. This means that sus­pi­cion must not be fig­ments of one's imag­i­na­tion." He ex­plained that prop­er ev­i­dence should take the form of tech­ni­cal ev­i­dence, such as e-mail cor­re­spon­dence and tele­phone records.Dols­ingh said the state of emer­gency was not de­signed to de­tain peo­ple "willy nil­ly" since prop­er pro­ce­dures and guide­lines should have been fol­lowed.

George, how­ev­er, brand­ed the de­ten­tion of the 16 as a to­tal abuse of process and de­mand­ed that Gov­ern­ment ex­plain to the pop­u­la­tion what re­al­ly tran­spired.He said the 16, al­though they were de­tained un­der the emer­gency, were, how­ev­er, al­leged­ly in­volved in spe­cif­ic mat­ters."This cer­tain­ly opens the doors for any court and I will say def­i­nite­ly that the 16 men can sue," George added.He said the na­ture of the al­le­ga­tions made in­ter­na­tion­al head­lines which brand­ed the de­tainees as po­lit­i­cal as­sas­sins and since there was no ev­i­dence it em­bar­rass­ing­ly "moved the coun­try from a third world sta­tus to a fourth world sta­tus.

"This en­tire sce­nario ag­i­tat­ed the sym­pa­thy, the con­cerns and prayers of the na­tion... of the en­tire world."Then you come with your pock­ets emp­ty and a sheep­ish look on your face. One has to won­der who is ad­vis­ing these moves. Where are the le­gal ad­vis­ers to the Gov­ern­ment?" George ques­tioned.He al­so raised con­cern that the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard was not con­sult­ed dur­ing the process.

He added: "There was the no­table ab­sence of the DPP in the con­sul­ta­tion process and it ap­peared from the word 'go' that some­thing was amiss."It was on­ly in the 11th hour was the ques­tion asked: 'What about the role of the DPP?"The State is al­so fac­ing some $13 mil­lion be­ing claimed, thus far, by peo­ple charged but sub­se­quent­ly freed of an­ti-gang of­fences af­ter the charges against them were dropped.On­nell Dy­er and Shawn Paul, who were charged un­der the An­ti-Gang Act 2011, through their at­tor­ney Kevin Rati­ram, filed law­suits for a to­tal of $6.4 mil­lion.

The two were among 23 per­sons who were freed last month at the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates' Court by act­ing Deputy Chief Mag­is­trate Ra­jen­dra Ram­bachan af­ter the State did not have ev­i­dence to pros­e­cute the charges against them. Dy­er, 23, was near the Mon Re­pos Po­lice Sta­tion on Au­gust 26 when he was ar­rest­ed on an out­stand­ing war­rant for fail­ing to at­tend court. He had two cas­es pend­ing in the Princes Town Mag­is­trates' Court.In his pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter, Dy­er said he was tak­en to the sta­tion and three days lat­er was charged with be­ing a mem­ber of a gang.Paul, 35, was held on Au­gust 24 while at his home af­ter be­ing ac­cused of be­ing a mem­ber of a crim­i­nal gang. He spent 35 days in prison and was re­leased on Sep­tem­ber 29. Five peo­ple are pur­su­ing le­gal ac­tion for wrong­ful ar­rest.