DEREK ACHONG

Po­lice are ex­pect­ed to re­lease most of the 19 sus­pects held in con­nec­tion with a TT$160 mil­lion co­caine bust aboard a car­go ves­sel bound for Eu­rope. 

Ac­cord­ing to se­nior po­lice sources, the de­ci­sion to re­lease 16 In­di­an na­tion­als and a Turk­ish man and leave an In­di­an na­tion­al and a Turk­ish man in cus­tody was tak­en af­ter in­ves­ti­ga­tors reached an ad­vanced stage of their in­ves­ti­ga­tion and con­sult­ed with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion (DPP), yes­ter­day. 

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the 17 sus­pects, who were be­ing de­tained at dif­fer­ent po­lice sta­tions in west Trinidad and on-board their ves­sel, were not im­me­di­ate­ly re­leased. 

Sources said that po­lice were try­ing to de­ter­mine the next step for the de­tainees as none of them had been cleared by im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials be­cause they were in­ter­cept­ed off the north coast of Trinidad.  

Guardian Me­dia was told that even if arrange­ments are made, at least three of the In­di­an na­tion­als would have to re­main in cus­tody to op­er­ate the large ves­sel, which re­mains docked at the Coast Guard’s base at Staubles Bay in Ch­aguara­mas. 

The de­ci­sion on the 17 de­tainees came hours af­ter their lawyers Wayne Sturge, Mario Mer­ritt, Karunaa Bis­ram­s­ingh, and Manuela Hospedales wrote to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith threat­en­ing to file habeas cor­pus writs to call on po­lice to jus­ti­fy their clients’ pro­tract­ed de­ten­tions to a court. 

As she quot­ed sev­er­al cas­es on the de­ten­tions of per­sons, Bis­ram­s­ingh said: “The ef­fect of these au­thor­i­ties on the Claimants is that they should have been re­leased af­ter a max­i­mum of 48 hours de­ten­tion with­out any charges be­ing prof­fered against them, and in those premis­es, our clients have been un­law­ful­ly in­car­cer­at­ed by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, his ser­vants and/or agents for ap­prox­i­mate­ly nine days.” 

Re­spond­ing on be­half of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), at­tor­ney Ri­ad Ho­sein re­quest­ed that the lawyers re­frain from fil­ing the law­suits as he sought to give an ex­pla­na­tion for the ap­par­ent de­lay. 

“All the sus­pects be­ing for­eign na­tion­als in­clud­ing your clients makes this in­ves­ti­ga­tion a com­plex one be­cause of the lan­guage bar­ri­er,” Ho­sein said, as he claimed that in­ves­ti­ga­tors were on­ly able to source and re­tain ap­pro­pri­ate in­ter­preters, last Fri­day. 

He al­so claimed that it took al­most a week to care­ful­ly search the 300-foot ves­sel. 

“I am in­struct­ed by the in­ves­ti­ga­tor that the ves­sel start­ed to lean on one side up­on the tanks be­ing emp­tied and this cre­at­ed a haz­ard,” he said, as he not­ed that Coast Guard en­gi­neers had to in­ter­vene to ad­dress the is­sue. 

Ho­sein al­so sought to as­sure Bis­ram­s­ingh that her clients’ wel­fare is­sues were be­ing met whilst in cus­tody and not­ed that they had been al­lowed to reg­u­lar­ly com­mu­ni­cate with her and their oth­er lawyers. 

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports on April 28, of­fi­cers of the Coast Guard’s Spe­cial Naval Unit in­ter­cept­ed the MV Throne af­ter re­ceiv­ing in­tel­li­gence from Unit­ed States au­thor­i­ties. 

They found 475.9 ki­los of co­caine hid­den in a spe­cial­ly-made com­part­ment in one of the ship’s fu­el tanks. 

Al­though the Ma­rine Traf­fic: Glob­al Ship­ping Track­ing In­tel­li­gence web­site in­di­cat­ed that the ship’s fi­nal des­ti­na­tion was ex­pect­ed to be Belem in Brazil, sources said that was not the case in this in­stance. 

The source said the ship had tra­versed Caribbean wa­ters in the last two months and had been to Ja­maica in one in­stance. The tanker, ac­cord­ing to the site, left Guayaquil, Ecuador, and passed through the Pana­ma Canal sev­er­al weeks ago.

De­tec­tives of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.