Chair­man of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee Khafra Kam­bon is de­mand­ing an ur­gent and im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to claims that po­lice have abused de­tainees at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre, Aripo.The call fol­lows an al­leged in­ci­dent on Ju­ly 21 when Kam­bon said po­lice were called to the cen­tre and se­vere­ly beat sev­er­al de­tainees, who lat­er had to be tak­en for treat­ment.In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Kam­bon said the com­mit­tee was "ab­solute­ly ap­palled" by the re­ports of the vi­o­lent at­tack.

While the ma­jor­i­ty of the in­mates are said to come from the Caribbean, there are a few from African coun­tries, of whom a hand­ful are mar­ried to T&T na­tion­als.Ghana­ian Musa Ibra­haim and Guyanese Nurse Shaun were re­port­ed­ly se­ri­ous­ly in­jured in the in­ci­dent on Mon­day, and a Niger­ian was re­port­ed to have been in­jured in a sim­i­lar in­ci­dent sev­er­al days be­fore.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the de­tainees had been protest­ing the length of time they had been de­tained with­out any end in sight, Kam­bon stressed the ac­tion had been noisy but not vi­o­lent.He wrote: "De­tainees are an­gry be­cause they are not there for crim­i­nal of­fences. Over­stay­ing the al­lot­ted time in a coun­try is not a crim­i­nal of­fence. "Vol­un­tary de­par­ture to Cari­com coun­tries is an easy op­tion open to Im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties.

"Even if there was an in­sis­tence on de­por­ta­tion, where the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pay would be on the State, the costs to de­port per­sons to Cari­com coun­tries do not jus­ti­fy in­def­i­nite de­ten­tion."There are even cas­es where per­sons have valid re­turn tick­ets to their coun­tries and they re­main in­car­cer­at­ed."

He added: "One of the ag­gra­vat­ing fac­tors for Cari­com na­tion­als is that they are see­ing in­di­vid­u­als from out­side the Cari­com re­gion come and go very quick­ly while their de­ten­tions con­tin­ue in vi­o­la­tion, not on­ly of their in­di­vid­ual hu­man rights, but the very spir­it of Cari­com agree­ments."Some of the per­sons who have left them be­hind in­di­cat­ed be­fore their re­lease they would be out short­ly be­cause they had paid mon­ey to of­fi­cials for their re­lease.

"These com­plaints have al­so been fre­quent­ly made by African na­tion­als, the group that con­sis­tent­ly en­dures the longest pe­ri­ods of de­ten­tion, in a few cas­es ex­tend­ing be­yond three years."Re­fer­ring to the Niger­ian man who was beat­en days be­fore Mon­day's in­ci­dent, Kam­bon said he was mar­ried to a T&T na­tion­al, with whom he had four chil­dren.

Kam­bon claimed the man suf­fered a head in­jury dur­ing the at­tack af­ter "his de­ten­tion was ex­tend­ed for more than two months af­ter his re­lease had been or­dered by the Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Ho­n­ourable Em­bau Mo­heni."De­scrib­ing the in­ci­dent as "bloody," Kam­bon urged the au­thor­i­ties to act now and or­der the re­lease of de­tainees mar­ried to T&T na­tion­als and to ini­ti­ate the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion process.

Ad­vo­cat­ing for the re­lease of im­mi­grants de­tained for more than six months on hu­man­i­tar­i­an grounds, Kam­bon al­so called for the de­por­ta­tion process to be speed­ed up, es­pe­cial­ly for peo­ple who did not have ties to T&T.