Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie yes­ter­day de­fend­ed the de­ten­tion of 10 pris­on­ers at Teteron Bar­racks and Staubles Bay in Ch­aguara­mas.

Je­re­mie said to en­sure the Gov­ern­ment was in good stand­ing af­ter com­plaints by the in­mates about the in­hu­mane con­di­tions at the mil­i­tary base, he vis­it­ed them there last week. How­ev­er, dur­ing the vis­it, he told the pris­on­ers the au­thor­i­ties are deal­ing with a cri­sis and “their rights are sec­ondary to ours,” not­ing they were al­so not be­ing kept in premis­es equiv­a­lent to the Hy­att ho­tel.

Je­re­mie spoke about his vis­it dur­ing yes­ter­day’s de­bate on a mo­tion on the Pris­ons (no 2) Or­der 2025. This re­in­forced Teteron Bar­racks and Staubles Bay as a prison site for the in­mates, who were trans­ferred there in the ear­ly hours of Ju­ly 18, when the State of Emer­gency (SoE) was de­clared.

The premis­es at Teteron Bar­racks and Staubles Bay—which were ap­proved by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der—are both dis­trict pris­ons and de­ten­tion cen­tres. Yes­ter­day’s mo­tion was to re­des­ig­nate both as pris­ons as op­posed to dis­trict pris­ons, retroac­tive to Ju­ly 18.

In re­sponse to a spe­cif­ic call from Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi for greater speci­fici­ty on the de­scrip­tion of the premis­es, Je­re­mie said he was pre­pared to stand be­hind the se­cu­ri­ty forces’ ad­vice on the mat­ter.

“They asked to des­ig­nate premis­es in a par­tic­u­lar way. It’s been des­ig­nat­ed as such. These in­di­vid­u­als are se­cure in those premis­es. The premis­es are not the Hy­att but they’re se­cure there,” the AG said.

Je­re­mie said on Ju­ly 18, cer­tain pris­on­ers who were on re­mand and who were not yet con­vict­ed were trans­ferred to the Ch­aguara­mas fa­cil­i­ties. He said Sec­tion 5 (2) of the Pris­ons Act pro­vid­ed that any per­sons sen­tenced on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to im­pris­on­ment (with/with­out hard labour) may be im­pris­oned at the near­est dis­trict prison. He said the in­car­cer­a­tion of re­man­dees there was chal­lenged in light of Sec­tion 5 (2). But he said Sec­tion 7 of the Pris­ons Act al­lowed the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons pow­er to trans­fer pris­on­ers from any prison at his dis­cre­tion.

Notwith­stand­ing this, Je­re­mie said in or­der to de­ter un­nec­es­sary le­gal chal­lenges based on the sta­tus of peo­ple de­tained at Teteron/Staubles Bay and out of an abun­dance of cau­tion, Gov­ern­ment pro­posed that the ini­tial Pris­ons Or­der 2025 be re­voked and those premis­es be re­des­ig­nat­ed as pris­ons.

Ad­dress­ing In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira’s view that bal­ance must be struck where in­di­vid­ual rights and that of the 10 men were con­cerned, Je­re­mie said if it were ac­cept­ed there was an im­mi­nent threat on Ju­ly 17/18, the job of any pol­i­cy­mak­er in bal­anc­ing this was to avoid pre­cise­ly the oc­cur­rence that Vieira not­ed hap­pened 35 years ago—the 1990 coup at­tempt.

Je­re­mie added, “It was in that con­text in the (Low­er House) I spoke of the fact that we might not have been here to­day. Giv­en every­thing that’s dif­fer­ent to­day—the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of these groups—be­lieve you me, what you’re look­ing at out­side of the prison in terms of num­ber is greater than what we faced in 1990.”

He added, “We’re com­mit­ted as a Gov­ern­ment to the rule of law, to at­tempt­ing to strike that bal­ance be­tween the rights of the in­di­vid­ual and the rights of the many in so­ci­ety.

“It was that fact that drove me to pay a vis­it to the de­tainees in Teteron last week be­fore Cab­i­net and I spoke to them, I went in­to their cells.

“I’m not field­ing re­quests for meals and bet­ter this and so on and so forth. I saw the premis­es and I’m not a prison ex­pert, but I thought it was my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to see that they were alive, that they were be­ing treat­ed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly, giv­en the na­ture of the threat that we faced,” Je­re­mie said.

“Now, of course, every­body is com­plain­ing—there are com­plaints about all man­ner of things. But these are per­sons who—to be frank—our in­tel­li­gence ser­vices tell us, were plot­ting, they were an ex­is­ten­tial threat to the State days ago. So, you should un­der­stand while I lis­tened to them, when I looked at them I did so with a jaun­diced eye,” the AG added.

“We’re at­tempt­ing to bal­ance. Some­times the bal­ance is equal­ly struck, some­times you weigh one in favour of the oth­er and at this point in time—I’m sor­ry to say—the bal­ance has to be weighed in favour of the rights of the many.”

He not­ed that he wore no mask dur­ing his vis­it.

“Every­one else was do­ing that. I say it to this Sen­ate and I said it to them that we’re deal­ing with a cri­sis and their rights are sec­ondary to ours ... There will come a time and that day may be soon when I’m very con­cerned about their con­sti­tu­tion­al and hu­man rights—Not so to­day.”

He thanked many, in­clud­ing in the prison ser­vice.

“There are in­di­vid­u­als in the prison ser­vice who are good, hard-work­ing peo­ple de­spite com­ing un­der se­ri­ous threat ... when I went to Teteron, all of them were present.”

On the ques­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of var­i­ous pro­vi­sions in the Pris­ons Act, Je­re­mie said, “I like my chances. It’s a 1,900-piece of leg­is­la­tion, a lot in it is cov­ered by what we now know to be a very pow­er­ful sav­ings of ex­ist­ing laws’ claus­es. So I like my chances.”