Derek Achong

The State is set to pay sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion to a firearm deal­er from Mar­aval over un­law­ful ac­tions by po­lice of­fi­cers in pros­e­cut­ing him for il­le­gal firearm charges.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment on Tues­day af­ter­noon, Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad up­held the law­suit in which Brent Thomas, of Spe­cial­ist Shoot­ers Train­ing Cen­tre Lim­it­ed, con­tend­ed that there were nu­mer­ous breach­es of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights at every stage of the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

How­ev­er, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad did not im­me­di­ate­ly as­sess the com­pen­sa­tion, which will be cal­cu­lat­ed at a lat­er date.

He al­so agreed to stop the crim­i­nal cas­es against Thomas.

In the law­suit, Thomas’ le­gal team led by Se­nior Coun­sel Fyard Ho­sein chal­lenged six search war­rants that were ob­tained by the po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to in­ves­ti­gate Thomas and his busi­ness.

They al­so con­tend­ed that po­lice of­fi­cers act­ed il­le­gal­ly when, with the as­sis­tance of the Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force, they “ab­duct­ed” Thomas, who was tran­sit­ing through Bar­ba­dos to seek med­ical at­ten­tion in Mi­a­mi in Oc­to­ber, last year.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, the first war­rant was ex­e­cut­ed at Thomas’ premis­es on Au­gust 8, last year.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors ex­e­cut­ed three more search war­rants be­fore Thomas was first de­tained on Sep­tem­ber 29.

Thomas spent sev­er­al days in po­lice cus­tody be­fore High Court Judge Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams or­dered his im­me­di­ate re­lease due to the in­abil­i­ty of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to jus­ti­fy his con­tin­ued de­ten­tion on Oc­to­ber 2.

The fol­low­ing day, Thomas trav­elled to Bar­ba­dos to fa­cil­i­tate his med­ical treat­ment.

On Oc­to­ber 5, he was ar­rest­ed by heav­i­ly armed Bar­ba­dos po­lice at his ho­tel room.

Thomas was briefly de­tained be­fore be­ing trans­port­ed to the Grant­ley Adams In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port where he was hand­ed over to ASP Birch and an­oth­er of­fi­cer, who pre­vi­ous­ly ex­e­cut­ed some of the search war­rants on his busi­ness and home.

Thomas was re­turned to Trinidad on a small T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) air­craft and was charged with sev­en firearm of­fences un­der cor­re­spond­ing ar­rest war­rants.

Sev­er­al weeks lat­er, the TTPS con­tact­ed Thomas and sought to re­vis­it his premis­es to con­tin­ue their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Deal­ing with Thomas’ ar­rest in Bar­ba­dos, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad ruled that Thomas was un­law­ful­ly ab­duct­ed in Bar­ba­dos. “That is an un­con­tro­ver­sial fact,” he said.

He sug­gest­ed that the man­ner of Thomas’ de­ten­tion showed a clear at­tempt to by­pass the law­ful pro­ce­dure of re­quest­ing his ex­tra­di­tion.

As part of his de­ci­sion in the case, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad up­held Thomas’ ap­pli­ca­tion to stay the sev­en crim­i­nal charges with “no hes­i­ta­tion”.

Deal­ing with the charges, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad not­ed that Thomas was li­censed to im­port and pos­sess the au­to­mat­ic weapons and ex­plo­sives that he was charged with by suc­ces­sive Po­lice Com­mis­sion­ers.

He al­so not­ed that Thomas’ com­pa­ny sup­plied such weapons to var­i­ous arms of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

The State was al­so or­dered to pay his le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the law­suit.

Thomas was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by De­vesh Ma­haraj, Sasha Bridge­mo­hans­ingh, and Cheyenne Lu­go.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Vanes­sa Gopaul, Svet­lana Dass, Michelle Ben­jamin, Lianne Thomas, and Adana Hosang.

Ian Ben­jamin, SC, Tekiyah Jorsling, Lau­ra Per­sad, and Chantelle Le Gall rep­re­sent­ed the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).