Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Dr Faith Breb­nor has suc­ceed­ed in her le­gal bat­tle to chal­lenge a search war­rant for her home, which was ob­tained by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) as part of its al­leged fraud probe in­to her and oth­er THA mem­bers.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment yes­ter­day morn­ing, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad up­held Breb­nor’s ju­di­cial re­view claim over a de­ci­sion by Mag­is­tra­cy Reg­is­trar Jameel Watch to grant the war­rant for her home in Belle Gar­den, To­ba­go, in Ju­ly 2023.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ruled that Watch’s de­ci­sion was flawed as it was based on de­fec­tive in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers.

“The court can­not adopt a tech­ni­cal or ar­ti­fi­cial ap­proach and it can­not dis­re­gard ma­te­r­i­al as­pects of the war­rant and gloss them over as mere mis­state­ments,” he said.

He not­ed that the of­fi­cers wrong­ly claimed they were prob­ing Breb­nor for be­ing un­law­ful­ly em­ployed by the THA when she was in fact an elect­ed of­fi­cial.

“That ref­er­ence was one which nei­ther the in­ves­ti­ga­tor nor the sec­ond de­fen­dant (Watch) could have rea­son­ably be­lieved,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

He al­so found that Watch did not have rea­son­able grounds for be­liev­ing the war­rant would have yield­ed ev­i­dence rel­a­tive to the TTPS probe.

“They must have al­so known or should have known that none of the items list­ed in the Wind­ward war­rant could have demon­strat­ed that the claimant was hired by the THA,” he said.

“The sec­ond de­fen­dant al­so act­ed ir­re­spon­si­bly and in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly as he had be­fore him no ma­te­r­i­al which was ca­pa­ble of pro­vid­ing any ob­jec­tive jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the is­suance of the war­rant.”

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was re­port­ed­ly re­lat­ed to an au­dio record­ing by pur­port­ed whis­tle-blow­er Ak­il Ab­dul­lah al­leg­ing there were plans by THA of­fi­cials to hire in­di­vid­u­als to car­ry out a pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign.

He not­ed that when the Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine dealt with the con­tro­ver­sial au­dio record­ing at a THA spe­cial ple­nary sit­ting, Ab­dul­lah re­cant­ed and claimed that he was paid by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

“The ev­i­dence sug­gests that Ab­dul­lah may not have been the most re­li­able of in­for­mants. How­ev­er, his sub­se­quent al­leged con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and vac­il­la­tion oc­curred af­ter the war­rant was is­sued,” he said.

“The in­ves­ti­ga­tor, how­ev­er, ought to have had re­gard to the volatile po­lit­i­cal cli­mate and she need­ed to adopt a cau­tious ap­proach.”

As part of his judg­ment, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad of­fered ad­vice to ju­di­cial of­fi­cers who have the pow­er to grant search war­rants.

“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,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

“It must al­so be re­mem­bered that any at­tempt, whether re­al or per­ceived, to in­ter­fere with or in­flu­ence pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al con­duct and/or ex­er­cise of ju­di­cial au­thor­i­ty has no place in this Re­pub­lic and any such at­tempts should al­ways be re­sist­ed and re­ject­ed.”

While Jus­tice Seep­er­sad quashed the war­rant, he did not or­der any com­pen­sa­tion for Breb­nor who was nev­er charged with a crim­i­nal of­fence af­ter be­ing sub­ject­ed to the war­rant and the probe.

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