JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

A south-based busi­ness­man is su­ing the State over the pow­ers grant­ed to po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE), claim­ing it is in breach of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Mozam Edoo is seek­ing four de­c­la­ra­tions through the court, in­clud­ing a de­ter­mi­na­tion that Reg­u­la­tion 13(3) of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions is in­con­sis­tent with Sec­tions 4(b), 5(2)(c)(iii) and 5(2)(e) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, as it gives po­lice ju­di­cial pow­ers to ex­tend the de­ten­tion of those held dur­ing an SoE, claim­ing such in­con­sis­ten­cies are not rea­son­ably jus­ti­fied.

Sec­tion 13(3) of the Reg­u­la­tions states: “No per­son shall be de­tained un­der the pow­ers con­ferred by this reg­u­la­tion for a pe­ri­od ex­ceed­ing 48 hours ex­cept with the au­thor­i­ty of a mag­is­trate or of a po­lice of­fi­cer not be­low the rank of ASP on ei­ther of whose di­rec­tion such per­son may be de­tained for such fur­ther pe­ri­od, not ex­ceed­ing sev­en days as in the opin­ion of such mag­is­trate or po­lice of­fi­cer, as the case may be, is re­quired for the com­ple­tion of the nec­es­sary in­quiries, ex­cept that no such di­rec­tions shall be giv­en un­less such a mag­is­trate or po­lice of­fice, as the case may be, is sat­is­fied that such in­quiries can­not be com­plet­ed with­in a pe­ri­od of 48 hours.”

Sec­tion 4(b) speaks of the right of the in­di­vid­ual to equal­i­ty be­fore the law and the pro­tec­tion of the law; while the re­spec­tive sec­tions at chap­ter five ad­dress the right to be brought be­fore a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer swift­ly and the right to a fair hear­ing.

In the pre-ac­tion let­ter, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 5, Edoo stat­ed that while he un­der­stands that the reg­u­la­tions were in place in pre­vi­ous States of Emer­gency in 1990, 2011 and 2024, for fu­ture ref­er­ences, he wants the court to de­cide on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of this reg­u­la­tion.

Edoo, who is rep­re­sent­ed by Vis­han Gopaul-Go­sine, is con­tend­ing that the reg­u­la­tion gives po­lice the au­thor­i­ty, nor­mal­ly be­stowed up­on a mag­is­trate, to ex­tend the de­ten­tion pe­ri­od. How­ev­er, he ar­gues that the Con­sti­tu­tion al­lows for de­tainees to be brought “prompt­ly be­fore an ap­pro­pri­ate ju­di­cial au­thor­i­ty” af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed. He said the reg­u­la­tion blurs the line gov­ern­ing the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers. He fur­ther stat­ed that the reg­u­la­tion is a breach of the rules of nat­ur­al jus­tice and cre­ates an ap­pear­ance of bias for po­lice of­fi­cers, in terms of the de­ci­sion on whose de­ten­tion should be ex­tend­ed.

“To ex­tend the de­ten­tion of per­sons un­der the reg­u­la­tions serves no log­i­cal pur­pose, giv­en that mag­is­trates, who are ju­di­cial of­fi­cers, are law­ful­ly au­tho­rised to ex­er­cise such pow­ers,” he said, adding that the ben­e­fits of grant­i­ng po­lice such pow­ers are vast­ly out­weighed by the neg­a­tive ef­fects in breach­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Edoo is al­so seek­ing pay­ment of his le­gal fees and all oth­er fees and con­se­quen­tial or­ders the court deems fit if he is suc­cess­ful.

The mat­ter will be heard on Oc­to­ber 8 be­fore High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad.

Up to Oc­to­ber 1, po­lice had ar­rest­ed 2,458 peo­ple and re­cov­ered 146 guns and 1,819 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion dur­ing SoE ex­er­cis­es. A to­tal of 8.147 kilo­grammes of co­caine and 448.6 kilo­grammes of mar­i­jua­na has al­so been seized.