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Thursday, May 15, 2025

SORT head charged, denies wrongdoing

by

Derek Achong
1486 days ago
20210420
Inspector Mark Hernandez, leader of the Special Operations Response Team (SORT) looks back as he leaves the Maloney Police Station after being released on bail, yesterday.

Inspector Mark Hernandez, leader of the Special Operations Response Team (SORT) looks back as he leaves the Maloney Police Station after being released on bail, yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

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.


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