Derek Achong

Head of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) In­spec­tor Mark Her­nan­dez has been charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice in re­la­tion to an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the treat­ment of the sus­pects held for the ab­duc­tion and mur­der of An­drea Bharatt.

The charge against Her­nan­dez was re­vealed by of­fi­cers of the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) around 2 pm, yes­ter­day, as they ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly in a habeas cor­pus ap­pli­ca­tion brought by his at­tor­neys.

The charge was lat­er con­firmed by a state­ment is­sued by the Po­lice Ser­vice.

Dur­ing the brief hear­ing be­fore High Court Judge Bet­sy-Ann Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son, the PSB of­fi­cers in­di­cat­ed that they had re­ceived in­struc­tions to lay the charge from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

As at­tor­ney Yohann Niles, of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS)’s Le­gal Unit, in­di­cat­ed that in­ves­ti­ga­tors on­ly need­ed a short time to com­plete the pa­per­work need­ed to of­fi­cial­ly charge Her­nan­dez, Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son gave them un­til 4.15 pm to com­plete the process or re­lease him.

She al­so or­dered the State to pay half of Her­nan­dez’s le­gal costs for bring­ing the le­gal ac­tion, as she ruled that the ac­tion was rea­son­able in the cir­cum­stances of his pro­tract­ed de­ten­tion, since last Wednes­day.

Her­nan­dez was grant­ed $300,000 bail by a Jus­tice of the Peace and was al­lowed to leave the Mal­oney Po­lice Sta­tion short­ly be­fore 6 pm.

He was or­dered to make his first court ap­pear­ance in the San­gre Grande Mag­is­trate’s Court on June 1.

Her­nan­dez breaks his si­lence

Speak­ing to re­porters short­ly af­ter be­ing re­leased on bail, Her­nan­dez de­nied any wrong­do­ing in re­la­tion to the sur­viv­ing sus­pect and two oth­ers who died.

“It is very un­for­tu­nate what hap­pened to the two guys and they did not die in po­lice cus­tody but died while seek­ing med­ical at­ten­tion and they were brought to hos­pi­tal by the of­fi­cers,” Her­nan­dez said.

He went on: “I can tell you the two per­sons (Joel Bal­con and An­drew Mor­ris) who died, died with a lot of se­crets.”

“We want­ed them alive so they could be brought be­fore a com­pe­tent au­thor­i­ty to an­swer for their crimes,” he added.

Her­nan­dez main­tained that he and his col­leagues were af­fect­ed per­son­al­ly by Bharatt’s case.

“I want to tell you it is nev­er a good thing when cit­i­zens die. I can tell you that in­ves­ti­ga­tion was painful,” he said.

“We felt pain for An­drea Bharatt. Our mis­sion was to search and res­cue her,” Her­nan­dez said.

Her­nan­dez al­so ex­pressed con­fi­dence that he would be ex­on­er­at­ed by the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

“The of­fi­cers of the SORT feel pain and are sad­dened by the events but the in­ves­ti­ga­tion must go on and I am con­fi­dent that the truth will be re­vealed and jus­tice will be pre­served,” Her­nan­dez said.

He al­so ex­pressed hope that the unit, es­tab­lished by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, would not be taint­ed by him be­ing charged.

“As I am charged and lead the unit, I would like to tell T&T that they are in safe hands with the of­fi­cers of the SORT,” he said.

Her­nan­dez’s lawyer Ger­ald Ramdeen al­so ex­pressed con­fi­dence in his client’s case.

“It is re­al­ly a sad day for the peo­ple of T&T for an of­fi­cer like Mr Her­nan­dez to be put through the agony and tor­ment of be­ing in­car­cer­at­ed for in ex­cess of 140 hours for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to take place,” Ramdeen said.

“I am con­fi­dent that Mr Her­nan­dez would be proven in­no­cent and one hopes his rep­u­ta­tion would be re­stored,” Ramdeen added.

Court or­ders re­lease of WPC

The de­vel­op­ment in the case came hours af­ter High Court Judge Jacque­line Wil­son or­dered the re­lease of WPC Lau­ra Gadar, who was de­tained along­side Her­nan­dez and filed a sim­i­lar law­suit.

Her­nan­dez and Gadar were the on­ly two of the ap­prox­i­mate­ly two dozen mem­bers of the unit ques­tioned in re­la­tion to the probe, who re­mained de­tained by in­ves­ti­ga­tors since last week.

Both par­tic­i­pat­ed in iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­rades on Sat­ur­day.

Joel Bal­con and An­drew Mor­ris were prime sus­pects in the ab­duc­tion of Bharatt, a clerk at the Ari­ma Mag­is­trate’s Court, who went miss­ing on Jan­u­ary 29.

With­in hours of Bharatt’s dis­ap­pear­ance, both Mor­ris and Bal­con were de­tained by a team of SORT and An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit (AKU) of­fi­cers.

Mor­ris died at hos­pi­tal on Feb­ru­ary 1, while Bal­con suc­cumbed to in­juries he al­leged­ly sus­tained in po­lice cus­tody, al­most a week lat­er.

Bharatt’s bloat­ed and de­com­pos­ing body was found days be­fore Bal­con’s death (Feb­ru­ary 4), dumped over a precipice in Heights of Aripo.

Ne­gus George was even­tu­al­ly charged with her mur­der. An­oth­er sus­pect was al­leged­ly beat­en by po­lice but sur­vived and was re­leased with­out be­ing charged.

Her­nan­dez has been short-list­ed for one of three Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) posts. His nom­i­na­tion by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) is yet to be de­bat­ed and ap­proved by Par­lia­ment.

In an­tic­i­pa­tion of the hear­ings of Her­nan­dez and Gadar’s cas­es, mes­sages of sol­i­dar­i­ty were be­ing shared on so­cial me­dia, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Her­nan­dez was rep­re­sent­ed by Wayne Sturge, Ger­ald Ramdeen, Lemuel Mur­phy, Mario Mer­ritt, and Alex­ia Romero.

Gadar was rep­re­sent­ed by Ramdeen, Dayadai Har­ri­paul, Dar­ren Mitchell, and Umesh Ma­haraj.