De­tainees held un­der pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion dur­ing the cur­rent State of Emer­gency now have a clear path­way to chal­lenge their de­ten­tion un­der new­ly es­tab­lished pro­ce­dur­al guide­lines is­sued by the Re­view Tri­bunal. 

The guide­lines, as stat­ed in the T&T Gazette, ef­fec­tive from Jan­u­ary 9, 2025, man­date that all de­tainees must be in­formed of their right to re­quest a re­view of their de­ten­tion with­in 24 hours of be­ing tak­en in­to cus­tody. 

De­tainees or their rep­re­sen­ta­tives can sub­mit writ­ten re­view re­quests to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice or the Tri­bunal Sec­re­tari­at. Up­on re­ceiv­ing the re­quest, the tri­bunal must con­vene with­in sev­en days to as­sess the le­gal­i­ty and ne­ces­si­ty of the de­ten­tion.

The Re­view Tri­bunal, es­tab­lished un­der Sec­tion 11(1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go and para­graph 5(2) of the sec­ond sched­ule of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, 2011, serves as a crit­i­cal mech­a­nism to en­sure de­tainees’ rights are up­held dur­ing pe­ri­ods of emer­gency. While the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions grant the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty the au­thor­i­ty to is­sue de­ten­tion or­ders, the tri­bunal is tasked with en­sur­ing that these or­ders com­ply with le­gal stan­dards and do not vi­o­late con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

Un­der the guide­lines, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter must al­so con­duct a re­view of each de­tainee’s case with­in 21 days of de­ten­tion and pro­vide a re­port to the tri­bunal, along with sup­port­ing in­for­ma­tion.

Dur­ing hear­ings, de­tainees have the right to le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion and may present ev­i­dence and call wit­ness­es to sup­port their case. Hear­ings will gen­er­al­ly be con­duct­ed pri­vate­ly to safe­guard sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion un­less the de­tainee re­quests a pub­lic hear­ing.

The tri­bunal is em­pow­ered to sum­mon wit­ness­es, re­quest doc­u­ments, and in­spect lo­ca­tions rel­e­vant to the de­ten­tion. Based on its re­view, the tri­bunal will de­cide whether or not the de­ten­tion is law­ful or nec­es­sary for pub­lic safe­ty. If a de­ten­tion is deemed un­law­ful, the de­tainee must be re­leased im­me­di­ate­ly.

The es­tab­lish­ment of the Re­view Tri­bunal was an­nounced in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gazette No 1 of 2025. The tri­bunal has been con­sti­tut­ed un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, 2024, to ad­dress ap­peals and dis­putes aris­ing from de­ten­tions dur­ing emer­gen­cies.

Its ap­point­ed mem­bers are Deb­o­rah Peake SC, Ian Ben­jamin, SC, and Lee Mer­ry, SC.

A State of Emer­gency was called on De­cem­ber 30, 2024 to ad­dress es­ca­lat­ing crim­i­nal vi­o­lence in T&T.

—Rhon­dor Dowlat