The State is set to pay com­pen­sa­tion to 14 men from Cara­po, who were ar­rest­ed and de­tained for sev­er­al days fol­low­ing the mur­ders of two prison of­fi­cers in 2021.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ac­cept­ed li­a­bil­i­ty in the group’s wrong­ful ar­rest and false im­pris­on­ment law­suit last month be­fore the case went on tri­al be­fore High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed.

The con­ces­sion in the case came af­ter State at­tor­neys missed a dead­line for fil­ing the State’s de­fence and sought an ex­ten­sion.

The com­pen­sa­tion to be paid to the men, whose names were with­held due to se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns raised by their lawyers, is to be as­sessed by a High Court Mas­ter at a lat­er date.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, the men were ar­rest­ed on No­vem­ber 30, 2021, when a large group of po­lice of­fi­cers raid­ed their homes.

Their ar­rests came days af­ter prison of­fi­cers Trevor Ser­rette and Nigel Jones were mur­dered.

Ser­rette was killed at his fruit stall in Va­len­cia on No­vem­ber 26, 2021.

Three days lat­er, Jones was shot and killed at a taxi stand in Siparia. His six-year-old daugh­ter, who was stand­ing next to him, wit­nessed the dri­ve-by shoot­ing but es­caped un­scathed.

While some of the men con­tend­ed that they were not in­formed of the rea­son for their ar­rests, oth­ers al­leged that they were ques­tioned in re­la­tion to the duo’s mur­ders. One claimed that an of­fi­cer told him that they were forced to ar­rest them due to pub­lic out­cry af­ter the two killings.

The men were de­tained for be­tween 35 and 60 hours be­fore they were even­tu­al­ly re­leased with­out be­ing charged.

In the case, the men, through their lawyer Roshan To­ta-Ma­haraj claimed that the of­fi­cers did not have rea­son­able or prob­a­ble cause to ar­rest them as there was no ev­i­dence link­ing them to the mur­ders or any oth­er crime.

They claimed that they suf­fered dis­tress, hu­mil­i­a­tion, and em­bar­rass­ment as their ar­rests were pub­li­cised.

“The claimants felt tar­get­ed and viewed with dis­dain, scorn and dis­gust by mem­bers of the pub­lic and so­ci­ety at large as it gave the mis­guid­ed and gross­ly in­ac­cu­rate im­pres­sion that they were in fact ar­rest­ed and de­tained as sus­pects in the mur­ders of the prison of­fi­cers,” To­ta-Ma­haraj said.

He claimed that they were housed in un­san­i­tary cells at var­i­ous po­lice sta­tions in east Trinidad.

“These said cells were dirty and filthy and the toi­lets were not flushed reg­u­lar­ly,” To­ta-Ma­haraj said.

“The claimants were made to sleep on the cold hard con­crete for the du­ra­tion of their de­ten­tion. As a re­sult, they suf­fered im­mense sleep de­pri­va­tion,” he added.

The men were al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ra­jiv Rick­hi, Shve­ta Paras­ram, and Ria Ra­moutar. The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Ka­dine Matthew, and Can­dice Alexan­der.