DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe has been sent on leave, days af­ter the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) com­plained about al­leged VIP treat­ment be­ing giv­en to busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed, who is cur­rent­ly in­car­cer­at­ed at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) in Arou­ca un­der a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO).

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Cor­raspe was sent on leave for four months. Su­per­in­ten­dent Elvin Scant­er­bury has been cho­sen to act dur­ing his ab­sence.

In con­firm­ing the root of the is­sue yes­ter­day, POA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Lester Lo­gie said he wrote to Cor­raspe about the mat­ter on Fri­day, copy­ing the let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der.

In the let­ter, Lo­gie said the as­so­ci­a­tion had raised con­cerns that Hadeed, the founder and ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of Blue Wa­ters Prod­ucts Lim­it­ed, was re­ceiv­ing treat­ment not af­ford­ed to oth­er de­tainees, cre­at­ing a safe­ty risk for prison of­fi­cers.

“Mem­bers were be­ing threat­ened be­cause of it. They said he was out late in the night. He’s out­side his cell, all af­ter eight, nine o’clock in the night. Most of the day, he is in the prison ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing,” Lo­gie claimed.

“The of­fi­cers see­ing him watch­ing foot­ball, that kind of thing, while the oth­er de­tainees locked down in their cells. He watch­ing World Cup and things like that in the ad­min build­ing, that’s the ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fices. We don’t have in­mates in there.”

Lo­gie said the ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ing is sep­a­rate from the prison com­pound. He added that of­fi­cers re­port­ed be­ing threat­ened by oth­er de­tainees who be­lieve Hadeed was re­ceiv­ing pref­er­en­tial treat­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to Lo­gie, Hadeed is be­ing held in the re­mand sec­tion of the MSP and oc­cu­pies a cell by him­self. He said Hadeed is en­ti­tled to leave his cell for morn­ing ex­er­cise and to re­ceive vis­its but was get­ting oth­er priv­i­leges.

“There are de­tainees there who were not get­ting those priv­i­leges and some made threats to of­fi­cers based on the spe­cial treat­ment they saw him (Hadeed) get­ting. Those de­tainees don’t be out in the night and things like that,” Lo­gie said.

Lo­gie said re­mand pris­on­ers are gen­er­al­ly sub­ject to the same dai­ly regime as con­vict­ed in­mates, in­clud­ing lim­it­ed time out­side their cells.

Asked whether he wel­comed Cor­raspe be­ing sent on leave, Lo­gie said he hoped the move would lead to changes with­in the prison sys­tem.

“I hope it will send a mes­sage that cor­rec­tive ac­tions need to be tak­en be­cause of­fi­cers’ safe­ty is our pri­or­i­ty. We don’t want to lose of­fi­cers be­cause of that. So, some cor­rec­tive ac­tion, I ex­pect that the new com­mis­sion­er, the sit­ting com­mis­sion­er, will take.”

This is the sec­ond time Cor­raspe has been sent on leave since be­ing ap­point­ed com­mis­sion­er in Ju­ly 2024.

In Au­gust 2025, he was placed on 240 days of va­ca­tion leave dur­ing the State of Emer­gency, which had been de­clared on Ju­ly 18 and lat­er ex­tend­ed by Par­lia­ment af­ter in­tel­li­gence sug­gest­ed in­mates at the MSP were plot­ting to kill se­nior of­fi­cials in the law en­force­ment and jus­tice sec­tors.

At the time, Alexan­der said Cor­raspe had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed more than 200 days of va­ca­tion leave, de­spite pub­lic of­fi­cers gen­er­al­ly be­ing al­lowed to car­ry for­ward no more than 90 days.

Hadeed, 52, and his wife, Genevieve, 42, were ar­rest­ed on June 24 as part of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an al­leged con­spir­a­cy to mur­der the Prime Min­is­ter and oth­er gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. Fol­low­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of search war­rants at their West­moor­ings home and busi­ness premis­es in Trinci­ty, Hadeed was re­mand­ed to the MSP on June 26.

The Hadeeds are chal­leng­ing their con­tin­ued de­ten­tion un­der SoE or­ders in the court. That mat­ter comes up for hear­ing in the Ap­peal Court to­day. Apart from their con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty ar­gu­ment, lawyers for the Hadeeds have com­plained of the un­san­i­tary and in­hu­mane con­di­tions they have ex­pe­ri­enced since their in­car­cer­a­tions.

Guardian Me­dia sought a com­ment from Cor­raspe, Alexan­der and the Prime Min­is­ter last evening, but calls and mes­sages went unan­swered up to press time.