JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

For­mer State of Emer­gency (SoE) de­tainee Star Sab­ga broke down in tears af­ter learn­ing she was fi­nal­ly free from house ar­rest yes­ter­day, her at­tor­ney, Faris Al-Rawi, says.

Sab­ga was re­leased at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10.15 am yes­ter­day, as the State be­gan the sched­uled re­lease of SoE de­tainees ahead of the end of the SoE next week.

“She cried. Some of those tears were re­lief. Some were dis­be­lief. Oth­ers were sim­ply an out­pour­ing of emo­tion. She saw her fam­i­ly mem­bers come to her and walk in­to her liv­ing room past two won­der­ful po­lice of­fi­cers,” Al-Rawi said dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at his of­fice on Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, when asked how his client was cop­ing with her re­lease.

He said Sab­ga was still ad­just­ing to the re­al­i­ty of re­gain­ing her free­dom.

“Ms Sab­ga is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a mix of emo­tions, and it will take some time for her to come to terms with the fact that she can lock her front door, lock her bed­room door, and not ex­pect some­one to walk in to con­duct a check at 4 am while she is asleep, or at mid­night,” he said.

Al-Rawi said Sab­ga was per­mit­ted just two fam­i­ly vis­its dur­ing her time un­der house ar­rest, each last­ing 15 min­utes.

“From Ju­ly 23 to Sep­tem­ber 10, she had a to­tal of 30 min­utes of fam­i­ly time, ze­ro hours, ze­ro min­utes and ze­ro sec­onds out­side her apart­ment, and not even a win­dow open be­cause they were all bolt­ed and se­cured with pad­locks,” he said.

“It might sound lux­u­ri­ous to be de­tained in your home, but I think we can all re­mem­ber what COVID was like and what be­ing con­fined to our homes felt like. It’s very dif­fer­ent when you’re home alone and when you’re a lit­tle old­er, at near­ly 70 years old.”

Sab­ga had been un­der house ar­rest since Ju­ly 27. She, her niece Genei­vive Hadeed, and Hadeed’s hus­band, Do­minic Hadeed, were de­tained on June 27 in con­nec­tion with an al­leged plot to mur­der Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. The trio were ini­tial­ly held un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) at the Gold­en Grove Prison in Arou­ca.

The Hadeeds were re­leased on Ju­ly 23 af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der re­voked their de­ten­tion or­ders, say­ing con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was no longer pro­por­tion­ate while in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ued. Alexan­der said the de­ci­sion was based on le­gal, med­ical and con­sti­tu­tion­al con­sid­er­a­tions.

No rea­son was giv­en yes­ter­day for the re­vo­ca­tion of Sab­ga’s PDO.

Al-Rawi said sev­er­al le­gal chal­lenges aris­ing from the mat­ter re­main be­fore the courts. (See oth­er sto­ry)

Among them is a con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge to Sec­tion 6(2)(b) of the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act, which iden­ti­fies the au­thor­i­ties en­ti­tled to ap­ply for the in­ter­cep­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

“We hold the view that that sec­tion is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al be­cause it lacks cer­tain safe­guards,” Al-Rawi said.

He not­ed that law en­force­ment agen­cies can al­so seek ju­di­cial war­rants to in­ter­cept com­mu­ni­ca­tions and claimed the con­ver­sa­tion re­lied on by in­ves­ti­ga­tors took place on June 11, while the in­ter­cep­tion war­rant was sought and grant­ed be­tween June 18 and June 24.

The le­gal chal­lenges, in­clud­ing one mat­ter be­fore the Privy Coun­cil, con­cern the is­suance of the in­ter­cep­tion war­rant, the ex­e­cu­tion of search war­rants, the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the PDOs, the in­ter­cep­tion of tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions, and the State’s re­jec­tion of the State of Emer­gency Tri­bunal’s rec­om­men­da­tion that his clients be re­leased.

De­spite Sab­ga’s re­lease, Al-Rawi said it would be pre­ma­ture to con­clude that the con­spir­a­cy al­le­ga­tions against his clients had been dis­missed. He added that his clients are not con­tem­plat­ing fur­ther le­gal ac­tion against the State, as their on­go­ing mat­ters al­ready in­clude claims for com­pen­sa­tion.

Al-Rawi al­so stressed that his clients are not at war with the Gov­ern­ment.

Asked whether the Gov­ern­ment might view the mat­ter dif­fer­ent­ly, he de­clined to com­ment.

“I think that would take us down a rab­bit hole that would end up in a ‘he said, she said’ sit­u­a­tion. So, if I could re­spect­ful­ly not an­swer that ques­tion. The rea­son is that we’re in court, and we should al­low the court to de­ter­mine where we stand,” he said.