Derek Achong

The pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry in­volv­ing a group of men charged with mur­der­ing for­mer In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dana See­ta­hal, SC, re­sumed yes­ter­day af­ter an al­most two-month hia­tus.

When the high-pro­file case came up for hear­ing be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate In­drani Ce­de­no at the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, a po­lice of­fi­cer took to the wit­ness stand to tes­ti­fy on his in­volve­ment in the case. He was al­lowed to give ev­i­dence and was cross-ex­am­ined by de­fence at­tor­neys.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, ac­cused Ri­car­do Stew­art com­plained of feel­ing un­well and Ce­de­no di­rect­ed po­lice to take Stew­art to the hos­pi­tal for an ex­am­i­na­tion af­ter the hear­ing. She then ad­journed the case to this morn­ing.

Ev­i­den­tial hear­ings of the in­quiry had been put on hold since Ju­ly as Ce­de­no was con­sid­er­ing an ap­pli­ca­tion call­ing on her to re­cuse her­self based on al­leged im­prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Deputy Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) George Bus­by.

In No­vem­ber last year, Bus­by re­port­ed­ly in­formed Ce­de­no that a rel­a­tive of a po­lice of­fi­cer, who is a wit­ness in the in­quiry and an­oth­er case be­fore her, had re­ceived an ap­par­ent death threat via text mes­sage. The mes­sage mere­ly men­tioned See­ta­hal’s as­sas­si­na­tion in May 2014 and al­leged that a vi­o­lent at­tack would be forth­com­ing lat­er that month. It was not di­rect­ed at Ce­de­no and the threat did not ma­te­ri­alise.

While she claimed the com­mu­ni­ca­tion was not in­ap­pro­pri­ate, Ce­de­no ad­mit­ted she had cit­ed the threat in a sub­se­quent ap­pli­ca­tion for in­creased se­cu­ri­ty. The DPP’s of­fice agreed that Ce­de­no may ap­pear to be bi­ased in the case and ad­mit­ted it was on­ly aware of the com­mu­ni­ca­tions af­ter Ce­de­no made the dis­clo­sure.

Crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­ney Criston J Williams, who raised the is­sue of Ce­de­no’s re­cusal, was forced to with­draw from the case ear­li­er this month af­ter his clients re­quest­ed the ap­pli­ca­tion be with­drawn just as Ce­de­no was about to give her de­ci­sion.

De­spite the un­usu­al move, Ce­de­no still con­sid­ered the ap­pli­ca­tion and re­ject­ed it on Mon­day, al­low­ing for yes­ter­day’s re­sump­tion of the in­quiry.

The pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry has en­coun­tered sev­er­al road­blocks since re­put­ed gang leader Ra­jaee Ali and 13 al­leged as­so­ciates were charged with the crime a year af­ter See­ta­hal was mur­dered on May 4, 2014.

See­ta­hal was shot dead be­hind the wheel of her SUV while dri­ving along Hamil­ton Hold­er Street in Wood­brook.

Ali, his broth­ers Ish­mael and Hamid Ali; De­vaughn Cum­mings, Ri­car­do Stew­art, Earl Richards, Stephan Cum­mings, Kevin Parkin­son, Le­ston Gon­za­les; Ro­get Bouch­er and Gareth Wise­man were charged with the crime.