Rachael Es­pinet

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to apol­o­gise to hun­dreds de­tained dur­ing the No­vem­ber 2011 state of emer­gency. And he wants that apol­o­gy be­fore the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions.Ma­haraj said this at a press con­fer­ence at his Irv­ing Street, San Fer­nan­do of­fice yes­ter­day.

A le­gal claim against the state was al­ready filed in the San Fer­nan­do High Court by Po­lice In­spec­tor Earl Elie, who is seek­ing puni­tive dam­ages for be­ing de­tained for 13 days dur­ing the state of emer­gency, said Lawrence, who is rep­re­sent­ing Elie in the mat­ter.The gov­ern­ment should apol­o­gise to In­spec­tor Earl Elie and all the peo­ple de­tained un­der the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions and emer­gency pow­ers and all the peo­ple who were de­tained un­der the An­ti Gang Act, who had to be freed be­cause there was no ev­i­dence, Ma­haraj said.

"There should be at least an apol­o­gy from the Gov­ern­ment to these peo­ple and their fam­i­lies. As a lawyer I in­tend to pros­e­cute this claim in the High Court and if nec­es­sary in the Court of Ap­peal, and if nec­es­sary in the Fi­nal Court of Ap­peal for Trinidad and To­ba­go, be­cause it is my view as a lawyer that not on­ly was an in­jus­tice done to Earl Elie but an in­jus­tice was done to the peo­ple and the con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go," he said.

On Au­gust 23, 2011, Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil and Cab­i­net agreed to have a state of emer­gency de­clared."The ques­tion which aris­es in the claim filed by po­lice in­spec­tor Earl Elie is whether the al­leged pub­lic state of emer­gency which the gov­ern­ment said was in ex­is­tence to de­clare the state of emer­gency in 2011 threat­ened the life of the na­tion," Ma­haraj said.

Elie was de­tained un­der the premise that he was a sus­pect in a plot to as­sas­si­nate the Prime Min­ster and then at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan. But Ma­haraj said a state of emer­gency can on­ly be con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly called if there was an "ex­cep­tion­al sit­u­a­tion of cri­sis of pub­lic dan­ger which af­fects the whole pop­u­la­tion and which con­sti­tutes a threat for the or­gan­ised life of the coun­try."

"A pub­lic emer­gency in law means more than a threat to some peo­ple, it means dis­or­der or vi­o­lence which is so ex­ten­sive and so se­ri­ous as to threat­en the guardians of pub­lic safe­ty, name­ly civ­il gov­ern­ment and po­lice, or dam­age their abil­i­ty to guard the pub­lic safe­ty," he said."If a Cab­i­net could 'willy-nil­ly' cause a state of emer­gency to be de­clared, then Trinidad and To­ba­go can have a state of emer­gency cre­at­ed on a reg­u­lar ba­sis."

De­ten­tion time­line

Fol­low­ing is the time­line of events de­tailed in a state­ment made yes­ter­day by Lawrence.Elie was on du­ty at the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion on No­vem­ber 23, when he was ar­rest­ed and tak­en to the Wood­brook Po­lice Sta­tion, where he was told he was be­ing de­tained un­der the Emer­gency Reg­u­la­tions. He was a sergeant at the time.He was tak­en to his home, which was searched for il­le­gal firearms. Noth­ing il­le­gal was found.

Elie was giv­en a de­ten­tion or­der, which stat­ed that he was de­tained on the grounds that he was named as a per­son in­volved in a con­spir­a­cy to as­sas­si­nate the Prime Min­is­ter, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and two oth­er gov­ern­ment min­is­ters on No­vem­ber 24, 2011.Ma­haraj said Elie was in­ter­viewed about those al­le­ga­tions dur­ing an in­ter­view on No­vem­ber 24.On De­cem­ber 5, 2011, 13 days af­ter he was first de­tained, Elie was re­leased from cus­tody.