Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) deputy po­lit­i­cal leader San­jiv Bood­hu says while he re­spects the High Court’s de­ci­sion to keep busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve, in de­ten­tion, the case has in­ten­si­fied con­cerns over what he be­lieves is the Gov­ern­ment’s grow­ing use of ex­ec­u­tive de­ten­tion pow­ers un­der the State of Emer­gency.

“I have no com­ment on the find­ings of the court. I will re­spect the court’s rul­ing,” Bood­hu told Guardian Me­dia af­ter the High Court dis­missed the Hadeeds’ le­gal chal­lenge seek­ing their re­lease un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions.

The rul­ing al­lows the cou­ple to re­main in cus­tody while po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue.

Al­though de­clin­ing to com­ment on the mer­its of the judg­ment it­self, Bood­hu ar­gued that the broad­er is­sue ex­tends well be­yond the Hadeeds’ case.

“My is­sue is, in fact, not spe­cif­ic to the Hadeeds. It is that the ex­ec­u­tive is abus­ing its pow­er of de­ten­tion and cir­cum­vent­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guards that pro­tect cit­i­zens from the ar­bi­trary pow­er of the State to de­tain them,” he said.

Bood­hu con­tend­ed that pub­lic at­ten­tion gen­er­at­ed by the case should in­stead fo­cus on the Gov­ern­ment’s use of Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs), ar­gu­ing that hun­dreds of cit­i­zens have been de­tained for pro­longed pe­ri­ods with­out crim­i­nal charges be­ing laid.

He al­so ques­tioned whether the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions con­tain suf­fi­cient safe­guards be­fore a cit­i­zen can be de­prived of their lib­er­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to Bood­hu, there is no le­gal re­quire­ment for the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty to ob­tain the ad­vice, con­sent or ap­proval of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice be­fore is­su­ing a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der.

“Is the pop­u­la­tion com­fort­able know­ing that at any time, a min­is­ter can sign one doc­u­ment and have you jailed?” he asked.

Bood­hu fur­ther chal­lenged the Gov­ern­ment to ex­plain why it has re­lied on ex­ec­u­tive de­ten­tion pow­ers in­stead of the tra­di­tion­al crim­i­nal jus­tice process.

Grif­fith pro­pos­es

over­haul of process

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has al­so called for changes to the Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der regime, ar­gu­ing that the law should re­quire the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to in­de­pen­dent­ly cer­ti­fy in­tel­li­gence be­fore any de­ten­tion or­der can be is­sued.

His com­ments came af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der re­ject­ed claims of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the is­suance of PDOs, in­sist­ing the process is not po­lit­i­cal­ly di­rect­ed.

Grif­fith said his con­cern is not whether the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment is abus­ing the sys­tem, but whether the leg­is­la­tion it­self con­tains ad­e­quate pro­tec­tions against fu­ture abuse.

“For those who have no con­cern about the process for the PDO to­day, you may very well have that con­cern to­mor­row when an­oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tion us­es the present for­mat against you or yours,” he said.

He crit­i­cised Alexan­der’s ex­pla­na­tion of the process, ar­gu­ing it re­flect­ed a mis­un­der­stand­ing of in­tel­li­gence and law en­force­ment.

While le­gal of­fi­cers may re­view doc­u­ments for le­gal com­pli­ance, Grif­fith said in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, source re­li­a­bil­i­ty, threat as­sess­ments and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty analy­sis are spe­cialised func­tions that should re­main the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of law en­force­ment pro­fes­sion­als.

He ar­gued that the key is­sue is not who signs a de­ten­tion or­der, but who ver­i­fies the in­tel­li­gence used to jus­ti­fy tak­ing away a per­son’s lib­er­ty.

Grif­fith warned the leg­is­la­tion ap­pears to con­tain no ex­plic­it re­quire­ment for the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to rec­om­mend a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der, cre­at­ing what he de­scribed as a dan­ger­ous gap in the law.

He pro­posed amend­ing the leg­is­la­tion so the Com­mis­sion­er would in­de­pen­dent­ly as­sess in­tel­li­gence from au­tho­rised agen­cies be­fore de­cid­ing whether a gen­uine threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty or pub­lic safe­ty ex­ists and, if sat­is­fied, for­mal­ly rec­om­mend a PDO to the min­is­ter.

Grif­fith stressed he was not ac­cus­ing the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der or the present Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice of abus­ing the process.

In­stead, he ar­gued that laws should be judged not on­ly by how they are used to­day, but by how they could be mis­used in the fu­ture.