Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty la­belled him as an “un­de­sir­able” in its de­por­ta­tion or­der and de­tained him to send him out of the coun­try, vlog­ger Christo­pher “Chris Must List” Hugh­es was or­dered to be re­leased yes­ter­day.

The or­der came from High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed af­ter Hugh­es’ at­tor­neys Jagdeo Singh, Ger­ald Ramdeen and Vashisht Seep­er­sad filed a ju­di­cial re­view chal­leng­ing the de­por­ta­tion or­der. Mo­hammed al­so set a date for a case man­age­ment hear­ing to Oc­to­ber 23 and gave the State up to Sep­tem­ber 23 to re­spond to the at­tor­neys while Hugh­es’ le­gal team was giv­en up to Oc­to­ber 7 to re­ply.

The court mat­ter be­gan just af­ter 3 pm and last­ed less than 30 min­utes. By 7.25 pm Hugh­es was re­leased from the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre in Aripo and greet­ed by Ramdeen.

In their ap­pli­ca­tion, the at­tor­neys asked for the court to de­clare that the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s de­por­ta­tion or­der is “ir­ra­tional, un­rea­son­able and il­le­gal” and that his ar­rest and sub­se­quent de­ten­tion were in breach of Hugh­es’ fun­da­men­tal rights un­der Sec­tions 4 (a), (b) 5(2) c (i) and(ii) and sec­tion 5(2) h of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

The 11-point re­quest al­so in­clud­ed that the court quash the de­por­ta­tion or­der and have the State pay the le­gal cost of the ap­pli­ca­tion and oth­er ex­pens­es deemed fit.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s court hear­ing. Ramdeen sought to have the court de­ter­mine that fol­low­ing Hugh­es’ re­lease, the State would not pre­vent him from re-en­ter­ing the coun­try, should he be per­mit­ted to leave.

Hugh­es is cur­rent­ly fac­ing a two-year jail term or a $100,000 fine for pub­lish­ing a sedi­tious state­ment. His mat­ter was ad­journed to Jan­u­ary next year. He re­turned to the coun­try on Au­gust 18 for the hear­ing sched­uled for the 23 and had to lodge his pass­port with the reg­is­trar of the High Court as part of his bail con­di­tions.

On Fri­day he will ap­pear be­fore Jus­tice In­drani Ce­de­no to vary his bail which will al­low him to re­gain his pass­port, leave the coun­try and pos­si­bly ap­pear vir­tu­al­ly in Jan­u­ary. The de­por­ta­tion or­der is the third time that Hugh­es was held. His first ar­rest led to his sedi­tion charge. His sec­ond ar­rest on Sep­tem­ber 5 on mon­ey laun­der­ing al­le­ga­tions.