The State has been or­dered to pay al­most $100,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to an elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer from San Juan, who claimed that he was wrong­ly de­tained and as­sault­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers be­fore they ar­rest­ed his broth­er as part of a probe in­to an al­leged plot to dis­rupt Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in 2018.

High Court Judge West­min James or­dered com­pen­sa­tion for Wasim Mo­hammed as he up­held his wrong­ful ar­rest, false im­pris­on­ment, as­sault, and tres­pass case against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, last Fri­day.

In the law­suit, Mo­hammed claimed that the in­ci­dent oc­curred as a group of po­lice of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ed a war­rant at his apart­ment at his fam­i­ly’s home at Mo­hammed Ville, El So­cor­ro Road, San Juan, on Feb­ru­ary 8, 2018.

Mo­hammed’s younger broth­er Tariq was ar­rest­ed by the of­fi­cers and was de­tained for sev­er­al days be­fore be­ing re­leased with­out be­ing charged. He filed a sep­a­rate wrong­ful ar­rest and false im­pris­on­ment claim which is set to go on tri­al be­fore an­oth­er judge, lat­er this month.

Mo­hammed and his wife Hanaa, who mi­grat­ed af­ter the in­ci­dent, tes­ti­fied from their home in On­tario, Cana­da, dur­ing the tri­al in March last year.

They claimed that af­ter the po­lice of­fi­cers forced their way in­to the apart­ment, they did not show them the war­rant. They al­so al­leged one of the of­fi­cers punched Mo­hammed in his face and broke his nose. They claimed he on­ly re­alised the men were po­lice af­ter a se­nior of­fi­cer flashed them a doc­u­ment, which he pur­port­ed was the war­rant.

Mo­hammed claimed he was held for one and a half hours be­fore he was re­leased and al­lowed to seek med­ical at­ten­tion.

In de­ter­min­ing the case, Jus­tice James re­ject­ed claims that the of­fi­cers were per­mit­ted to search Mo­hammed’s apart­ment us­ing the war­rant in his broth­er’s name, as both sib­lings’ apart­ments were on the same com­pound. He stat­ed that war­rants should be draft­ed with pre­ci­sion to pre­vent State over­reach and abuse and to pre­serve the sanc­ti­ty of cit­i­zens’ homes.

“If the de­fen­dant’s sub­mis­sion were to be ac­cept­ed, it would per­mit law en­force­ment of­fi­cers to en­ter and search any res­i­dence with­in a mul­ti-unit com­pound, so long as the gen­er­al ad­dress stat­ed in the war­rant -even if the unit en­tered is not as­so­ci­at­ed with the name per­son on the war­rant,” Jus­tice James said.

“The law re­quires that search war­rants be ex­e­cut­ed with speci­fici­ty and re­straint, and ex­tend­ing the scope of a war­rant to en­com­pass un­re­lat­ed dwellings with­in the same com­pound would amount to un­law­ful over­reach of po­lice pow­ers.”

Rul­ing that the search was un­law­ful based on the is­sue with the war­rant, Jus­tice James not­ed the du­ra­tion of the search did not af­fect Mo­hammed’s claim.

“The fact that the re­straint may have been for a lim­it­ed pe­ri­od is not de­ter­mi­na­tive,” he said.

“False im­pris­on­ment is ac­tion­able per se and aris­es when­ev­er there is an in­ten­tion­al and to­tal re­straint on lib­er­ty with­out law­ful jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, how­ev­er brief that re­straint may be,” he added.

Jus­tice James found that Mo­hammed was as­sault­ed by one of the of­fi­cers, as he re­ject­ed claims that his nose was in­jured as he had his face pressed against the door when the of­fi­cers were forcibly open­ing it.

“The lo­calised na­ture of the in­jury, lim­it­ed to the nose, is more con­sis­tent with a di­rect blow, such as a punch, rather than the im­pact of a door be­ing forcibly opened,” he said.

He found Mo­hammed’s claim of re­peat­ed­ly be­ing kicked by the of­fi­cers was not sup­port­ed.

Jus­tice James or­dered $16,000 in dam­ages for un­law­ful ar­rest and false im­pris­on­ment with an up­lift for ag­gra­va­tion. He al­so award­ed $16,000 in dam­ages for as­sault based on Mo­hammed not suf­fer­ing last­ing dis­fig­ure­ment, func­tion­al im­pair­ment or psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma.

Mo­hammed was al­so award­ed $10,900 in spe­cial dam­ages, which rep­re­sents his med­ical ex­pens­es and the costs the fam­i­ly in­curred in re­plac­ing the door that was dam­aged by the of­fi­cers. He was al­so award­ed $30,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages for the of­fi­cers’ con­duct. The State was al­so or­dered to pay $21,488.33 in le­gal costs.

Mo­hammed was rep­re­sent­ed by Kings­ley Wales­by, Alvin Ram­roop and Sar­fraz Al­saran. The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, San­jeev Lal­la, Coreen Find­ley, and Brent James.