Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Reg­is­trar of the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil has writ­ten di­rect­ly to the par­ties in the Hadeed mat­ter to cor­rect what she de­scribed as a mis­con­cep­tion aris­ing from a me­dia re­port which sug­gest­ed there would be no ur­gent hear­ing in Lon­don, clar­i­fy­ing that the court stands ready to deal ex­pe­di­tious­ly with any ap­pli­ca­tion filed by the State.

Reg­is­trar Lau­ra An­gus ref­er­enced a Sun­shine To­day ar­ti­cle ti­tled "No Ur­gent Hear­ing in Lon­don - Hadeeds Re­main in Prison" and ex­pressed con­cern about how her cor­re­spon­dence had been ref­er­enced.

"I was sur­prised to see my cor­re­spon­dence quot­ed. It has al­so caused us con­cern that you may be labour­ing un­der a mis­con­cep­tion," An­gus wrote.

She said the court want­ed to make its po­si­tion clear to avoid any mis­un­der­stand­ing over the pro­ce­dure avail­able to the par­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to An­gus, if the Re­spon­dents make an ap­pli­ca­tion to the Privy Coun­cil to lift the stay grant­ed by the sec­ond con­sti­tu­tion of the Court of Ap­peal, the Privy Coun­cil would is­sue di­rec­tions to en­sure the mat­ter is dealt with "speed­i­ly on the pa­pers in the course of next week."

She fur­ther stat­ed that, for the avoid­ance of doubt, the Ap­pel­lant would be giv­en a short­ened pe­ri­od in which to re­spond.

The Reg­is­trar stressed that the court was con­cerned the Sun­shine To­day ar­ti­cle had cre­at­ed con­fu­sion over whether the Privy Coun­cil would en­ter­tain ur­gent pro­ceed­ings be­fore its sum­mer re­cess.

"We were con­cerned that the ar­ti­cle seemed con­fused and we want­ed to avoid any con­fu­sion on your part," she wrote.

An­gus al­so ad­vised the par­ties that, giv­en the ur­gency of the mat­ter, she was is­su­ing the clar­i­fi­ca­tion by email. How­ev­er, she re­mind­ed them that any ap­pli­ca­tion and re­sponse should or­di­nar­i­ly be filed through the Privy Coun­cil's on­line Por­tal. Where nec­es­sary, doc­u­ments may ini­tial­ly be sub­mit­ted by email for speed but must be reg­u­larised by fil­ing through the Por­tal with the ap­pro­pri­ate fee with­in sev­en days.

The clar­i­fi­ca­tion fol­lows de­vel­op­ments in the high-pro­file le­gal bat­tle in­volv­ing busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve Hadeed, whose de­ten­tion un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency sparked a se­ries of court chal­lenges.

The Privy Coun­cil de­clined the State's re­quest to hear its ap­peal on an ex­pe­dit­ed ba­sis be­fore the court's sum­mer re­cess. In cor­re­spon­dence is­sued at the time, the court in­di­cat­ed it did not wish to hear the sub­stan­tive ap­peal "in a rush in the last few days of term" and point­ed in­stead to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an ap­pli­ca­tion to lift the Court of Ap­peal's stay if the is­sue of the cou­ple's con­tin­ued de­ten­tion re­mained live.

That is­sue ul­ti­mate­ly be­came aca­d­e­m­ic af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der re­voked the Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders against the Hadeeds, ac­cept­ing a rec­om­men­da­tion from the Con­sti­tu­tion Re­view Tri­bunal that their con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was no longer nec­es­sary in the pub­lic in­ter­est.