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Saturday, October 11, 2025

Attorney upset after he was blindfolded before going to see client held in Teteron

by

Otto Carrington
78 days ago
20250725
Attorney CJ Williams speaks about his experience while visiting a client at Teteron Barracks, Chaguaramas,  yesterday.

Attorney CJ Williams speaks about his experience while visiting a client at Teteron Barracks, Chaguaramas, yesterday.

ANISTO ALVES

At­tor­ney CJ Williams plans to write to the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion (CBA) and Law As­so­ci­a­tion (LATT), call­ing for ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion, af­ter what he called a trou­bling vis­it to Teteron Bar­racks, Ch­aguara­mas, yes­ter­day.

Williams claimed he was told he had to be blind­fold­ed in or­der to con­sul­ta with client Earl Richards, one of the men charged in the mur­der of Dana See­ta­hal SC, who is now be­ing de­tained on the army base un­der the State of Emer­gency reg­u­la­tions.

In let­ters be­ing dis­patched to­day to CBA head Is­rael Khan, SC, and LATT pres­i­dent Lynette See­baran-Suite, Williams de­scribes the con­di­tions he faced dur­ing a vis­it to the De­fence Force-con­trolled site as a breach of at­tor­ney-client priv­i­lege. He said it was “a sad day in Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der the guise of a State of Emer­gency.”

He said be­fore he could see his client, he was he had to agree to sev­er­al con­di­tions.

“No elec­tron­ics, fine. Pen and pa­per on­ly — ac­cept­able. But then, they said I had to be blind­fold­ed be­cause of the ‘na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty threat’ of the site,” Williams said at his Port-of-Spain of­fice.

Williams, who ad­mit­ted to be­ing claus­tro­pho­bic, said he re­luc­tant­ly agreed to the blind­fold. But he claimed more trou­bling de­mands fol­lowed: he was told five masked men in full black tac­ti­cal gear would re­main in the room.

“That’s not a le­gal vis­it. That’s an in­tim­i­da­tion tac­tic,” Williams said.

“I was fur­ther warned that if any­thing I said could be ‘de­cod­ed’ as a sub­lim­i­nal mes­sage, the in­ter­view would be im­me­di­ate­ly ter­mi­nat­ed.”

He said he re­fused to pro­ceed un­der those terms and was or­dered to leave. The of­fi­cers, he said, de­clined to pro­vide names or reg­i­men­tal num­bers.

Williams said he lat­er con­tact­ed le­gal coun­sel for the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, who, he claimed, re­spond­ed on­ly to say that of­fi­cers were vis­i­ble but un­able to hear the con­sul­ta­tion. He said the blind­fold­ing and the so-called sub­lim­i­nal mes­sag­ing pol­i­cy were un­ad­dressed.

“We’re not at war. This is not Guan­tanamo. This is Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Williams said.

“For a lawyer to be asked to sur­ren­der his rights and blind­fold him­self just to speak with a client should alarm every cit­i­zen, not just the le­gal com­mu­ni­ty.”

He said he was deeply dis­turbed by the ap­par­ent mil­i­tari­sa­tion of the de­ten­tion process.
Williams called on the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­is­ter of De­fence, a trained crim­i­nal at­tor­ney, to im­me­di­ate­ly launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Williams said le­gal re­course is an op­tion but stressed his im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty is se­cur­ing ac­cess to his client un­der ap­pro­pri­ate con­di­tions.

“Right now, my mis­sion is sim­ple: speak to my client with­out masks, blind­folds, or threats,” he said. “Un­til that hap­pens, this coun­try is in dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry.”


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