Derek Achong

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Dr Faith Breb­nor has won her le­gal chal­lenge against the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice over a search war­rant is­sued dur­ing an al­leged fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to her and oth­er THA mem­bers.

De­liv­er­ing judg­ment on Tues­day morn­ing, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad up­held Breb­nor’s ju­di­cial re­view claim and ruled that Jus­tice of the Peace (JP) Jameel Watch act­ed un­law­ful­ly when he grant­ed the war­rant in Ju­ly 2023. The war­rant has now been quashed.

Breb­nor had named both Watch and the Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in the case. How­ev­er, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad dis­missed the claim against the Com­mis­sion­er, not­ing that the top cop played no role in ap­ply­ing for or is­su­ing the war­rant.

Seep­er­sad found that the de­ci­sion to grant the war­rant was based on in­ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers, who had claimed Breb­nor was il­le­gal­ly em­ployed by the THA. In fact, she is an elect­ed of­fi­cial.

The judge al­so found no rea­son­able ba­sis for be­liev­ing that the search would have un­cov­ered ev­i­dence rel­e­vant to the TTPS’s probe.

“Those who are en­trust­ed with the pow­er to is­sue search war­rants must nev­er lose sight of the fact that the is­su­ing and ex­e­cu­tion of same im­pinges up­on and in­ter­feres with the fun­da­men­tal rights of cit­i­zens, and they should be on­ly is­sued af­ter care­ful thought and ma­ture de­lib­er­a­tion,” Seep­er­sad said.

Al­though the war­rant was de­clared un­law­ful, the court did not award Breb­nor com­pen­sa­tion. She was nev­er charged fol­low­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of the war­rant.

The po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­port­ed­ly cen­tres on an au­dio record­ing of pur­port­ed whis­tle-blow­er Ak­il Ab­dul­lah, who claimed there was a plan by THA of­fi­cials to hire peo­ple for a pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign.

In a state­ment fol­low­ing the rul­ing, Breb­nor said she was thank­ful for the court’s de­ci­sion.

“The Court found that the Jus­tice of the Peace ought not to have is­sued the war­rant,” she said.

Breb­nor was rep­re­sent­ed by Christlyn Moore, Joshua Ham­let and Adan­na Joseph-Wal­lace. Watch was rep­re­sent­ed by Michael Quam­i­na, SC, while Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, ap­peared for the Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.