Crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­ney Fa­reed Ali has ques­tioned the strength of the ev­i­dence against Star Sab­ga fol­low­ing her re­lease from cus­tody, ar­gu­ing that al­le­ga­tions of a plot to as­sas­si­nate State of­fi­cials must be sup­port­ed by more than a record­ed con­ver­sa­tion.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Ali said in­ves­ti­ga­tors would need to demon­strate how Sab­ga was ma­te­ri­al­ly in­volved in any al­leged crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy.

“It’s okay to raise an al­le­ga­tion that she may have been in­volved in a plot to as­sas­si­nate State of­fi­cials, but you must be able to show in what ma­te­r­i­al way was she in­volved. That it was not just a con­ver­sa­tion,” Ali said.

Sab­ga was re­leased from cus­tody late Mon­day af­ter the tem­po­rary stay of Jus­tice Vigel Paul’s or­der ex­pired be­fore the Court of Ap­peal could hear the State’s ap­pli­ca­tion for a fur­ther stay, al­low­ing the High Court’s house ar­rest or­der to take ef­fect.

Ali al­so ad­dressed an au­dio record­ing, be­lieved to be a con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Sab­ga and a rel­a­tive, that has been wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia. He said sev­er­al crit­i­cal ques­tions re­main unan­swered, in­clud­ing whether the record­ing is au­then­tic, where it orig­i­nat­ed and when it was made.

“When we are ex­am­in­ing the au­dio, the au­then­tic­i­ty of the au­dio needs to be cor­rob­o­rat­ed in terms of whether it came from an of­fi­cial source,” Ali said.

He added that au­dio record­ings can be edit­ed and must be prop­er­ly dat­ed to es­tab­lish when they were cre­at­ed.

“We don’t know if that au­dio speaks to what pe­ri­od it speaks to, when ex­act­ly was that au­dio cal­i­brat­ed in terms of date and time,” he said.

Ali com­pared the is­sue to CCTV footage, where time­stamps help es­tab­lish when events oc­curred.

He al­so ques­tioned the le­gal ba­sis on which the al­leged con­ver­sa­tion would have been in­ter­cept­ed, say­ing that with­out an of­fi­cial re­sponse from the au­thor­i­ties, the pub­lic is left to spec­u­late about whether the record­ing is gen­uine and how it was ob­tained.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice has since launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the cir­cu­la­tion of the record­ing, warn­ing that in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions are pro­tect­ed un­der the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act and that the unau­tho­rised dis­clo­sure of such ma­te­r­i­al is a crim­i­nal of­fence.