Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

For the sec­ond time in a lit­tle over a week, the Court of Ap­peal will hear a pro­ce­dur­al ap­peal from Do­minic and Genevieve Hadeed. 

The Ap­peal Court is due to hear sub­mis­sions to­day on the cou­ple’s ap­peal against High Court Judge Vigel Paul’s re­fusal to ex­pe­dite their sub­stan­tive con­sti­tu­tion­al claim over their de­ten­tion as part of an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate key Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. They al­so al­lege they are be­ing tar­get­ed be­cause of their eth­nic­i­ty and the Gov­ern­ment’s move to ter­mi­nate their State land leas­es.

The hear­ing comes a week af­ter an­oth­er Ap­peal Court pan­el up­held their ap­peal against High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad’s re­fusal to grant their in­ter­im re­lease pend­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion of the sub­stan­tive case.

The cou­ple and a 70-year-old rel­a­tive, Star Sab­ga, were ar­rest­ed late last month based on pur­port­ed in­tel­li­gence gath­ered by the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) and is­sued Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der.

The cou­ple’s bid for in­ter­im re­lease was ini­tial­ly blocked by Jus­tice Seep­er­sad. 

Al­though Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ac­knowl­edged the con­di­tions in prison, he said that they could be com­pen­sat­ed through dam­ages if they are even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful in their le­gal chal­lenge. 

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment late last week, Ap­pel­late Judges Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar, Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er and Joan Charles found that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad was wrong.

While the ap­peal pan­el said that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad could not be fault­ed for giv­ing def­er­ence to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns raised by the State, the judges found that he failed to prop­er­ly con­sid­er that  Alexan­der pro­vid­ed in­suf­fi­cient grounds to war­rant their de­ten­tion un­der the PDOs, which would re­main in place while the State of Emer­gency (SoE) re­mains in place un­til mid-Sep­tem­ber. 

The pan­el al­so took is­sue with the fact that Alexan­der re­lied on in­tel­li­gence re­ports in the PDOs. 

The TTPS and Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al sub­se­quent­ly ob­tained a stay of that rul­ing from an­oth­er Ap­peal Court pan­el led by Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh pend­ing a fi­nal ap­peal be­fore the UK-based Privy Coun­cil.

CJ Boodoos­ingh and Jus­tices Mark Mo­hammed and Ricky Rahim ruled that the bal­ance of jus­tice re­quired the stay pend­ing the fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion of an ap­peal be­fore the coun­try’s high­est ap­pel­late court. 

Like Jus­tice Seep­er­sad, CJ Boodoos­ingh stat­ed that the po­ten­tial risk of the cou­ple con­tin­u­ing an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate key Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials if they are re­leased un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the po­lice was greater than con­cerns raised over Hadeed’s de­te­ri­o­rat­ing health since be­ing de­tained over the past three weeks. 

He sug­gest­ed that the med­ical con­cerns could be as­suaged by State of­fi­cials fa­cil­i­tat­ing ac­cess to his spe­cial­ist doc­tors while he re­mains un­der de­ten­tion. 

While the case has been list­ed on the Privy Coun­cil’s web­site, it (the Privy Coun­cil) is yet to set a hear­ing of the ap­peal be­fore it goes on its an­nu­al va­ca­tion pe­ri­od next Fri­day. 

In the sub­stan­tive case, the cou­ple’s lawyers have not on­ly chal­lenged their de­ten­tions based on PDOs un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions (EPR) for the SoE. 

They al­so claimed that the move by the Gov­ern­ment led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ex­tend the SoE, last month, was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al as it sought to tar­get mem­bers of the Syr­i­an/Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, a mi­nor­i­ty eth­nic group, and Hadeed per­son­al­ly.  

They ex­ten­sive­ly quot­ed state­ments made by AG John Je­re­mie in the SoE ex­ten­sion de­bate in Par­lia­ment, in which he re­peat­ed­ly de­scribed mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty as “the one per cent” and ac­cused them of be­ing fi­nanciers of the now-Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and of steal­ing state land. 

They sug­gest­ed that Je­re­mie was re­fer­ring di­rect­ly to Hadeed as the al­le­ga­tion arose af­ter he pub­licly crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy in March and af­ter the Cab­i­net sought to uni­lat­er­al­ly ter­mi­nate leas­es to State land held by his com­pa­ny in May. 

They ref­er­enced a let­ter sent to Hadeed by Je­re­mie’s of­fice in­di­cat­ing that the po­lice were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the is­sue of the grant­i­ng of the leas­es. 

Through the law­suit, the Hadeeds are seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions in­clud­ing over the le­gal­i­ty of the SoE ex­ten­sion and their de­ten­tions un­der PDOs. 

They are al­so claim­ing that over a dozen of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were breached by the al­leged ac­tions of the TTPS and the Gov­ern­ment and are seek­ing fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion. 

The Hadeeds are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Dou­glas Mendes, Gilbert Pe­ter­son, Rishi Dass, Faris Al-Rawi, Chase Pe­gus and Car­lon Mc Leod. 

The AG’s Of­fice and TTPS are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by British King’s Coun­sel Sir James Ead­ie, Ger­ald Ramdeen, Dayadai Har­ri­paul and ASP Ram­dath Phillip.