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Monday, February 17, 2025

Carnival 2018 terror plot

9 detainees now free

by

2557 days ago
20180217

The ma­jor­i­ty of the 13 peo­ple ini­tial­ly de­tained in re­la­tion to an al­leged ter­ror­ist plot tar­get­ing re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions have now been re­leased from po­lice cus­tody.

Po­lice and le­gal sources yes­ter­day con­firmed that four more sus­pects who were ar­rest­ed over the past ten days, were re­leased from var­i­ous po­lice sta­tions be­tween Thurs­day night and yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of de­tainees who were re­leased with­out charge thus far to nine.

Two oth­er sus­pects, a cou­ple from San Juan, were re­leased from cus­tody but were charged for pos­ses­sion of a com­po­nent of a firearm that was al­leged­ly found at their home at the time of their ar­rests.

Tariq Mo­hammed and Fawaz Ali were both re­leased on Wednes­day night, while Clint Rivers, Kirsten Isa Mo­hammed and Edoo Mo­hammed were re­leased on Thurs­day evening.

Mustapha Khan, from El So­cor­ro, San Juan, was re­leased around 1.30 am on Thurs­day, while an imam from Clax­ton Bay, who was on­ly iden­ti­fied by sources as Yasin, was re­leased an hour be­fore.

Muham­mad Salaam and Sha­heed Rahim, an imam from Princes Town, were re­leased from the Pin­to Road Po­lice Post and the Mar­aval Po­lice Sta­tion al­most si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

All the sus­pects had threat­ened to or filed habeas cor­pus writs be­fore their even­tu­al re­leas­es. The writs re­quire po­lice to bring a de­tainee be­fore a High Court judge and jus­ti­fy their con­tin­ued de­ten­tion. The writ is usu­al­ly used af­ter a sus­pect spends more than three days in cus­tody with­out be­ing charged.

Adil Mansano and his wife, Al­isha Thomas, were ex­pect­ed to ap­pear sep­a­rate­ly in the Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do High Courts for the hear­ing of their writs yes­ter­day morn­ing. How­ev­er, when the cas­es were called State at­tor­neys in­di­cat­ed that the cou­ple had been charged by po­lice and were tak­en to court ear­li­er.

While the writs were with­drawn, the State was or­dered to pay half of Mansano’s le­gal costs and 100 per cent of his wife’s le­gal bill as their at­tor­neys, Wayne Sturge and Lemuel Mur­phy, ar­gued that the writs had prompt­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tors to lay the charge.

Mansano and Thomas ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Re­han­na Ho­sein in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court and were de­nied bail as their crim­i­nal record trac­ing was not avail­able in time for the hear­ing. They are ex­pect­ed to reap­pear in court on March 16.

Le­gal sources close to the re­leased de­tainees said they are now con­sid­er­ing su­ing the State for false im­pris­on­ment.

“Clear­ly, they (the po­lice) did not have any ev­i­dence. If they did, they could have ap­plied to a court un­der the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act to ex­tend their de­ten­tion af­ter 72 hours had elapsed,” the source said.

Speak­ing at a tour of Port-of-Spain dur­ing Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions on Tues­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon had con­firmed that 13 per­sons had been held.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that at least six more ar­rests have been made since then.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day evening and asked to con­firm the to­tal num­ber of peo­ple ar­rest­ed through­out the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and the num­ber who re­mained in po­lice cus­tody up to late yes­ter­day, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Ellen Lewis said: “We do not have any ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion which we can share at this time.”


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